


A Leg to Stand On

by Aclyr, hufflepirate



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure, Anxiety, Arguing, Caretaking, Concussions, Courage, Disguise, Explosions, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mission Fic, Platonic Cuddling, Reconnaissance, Rescue, Rescue Missions, Sneaking, Stranded, Team, Team as Family, Yoga
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-11-29 23:16:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11451105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aclyr/pseuds/Aclyr, https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepirate/pseuds/hufflepirate
Summary: Hunk has never wanted to be in charge of anything, but when he gets stranded on an unknown planet with a concussed Shiro, light-years away from where they were supposed to be and unable to contact the rest of the team, he has do it anyway.  A galaxy away, the rest of the team is short on resources and shorter on personnel, but they're not about to let Hunk and Shiro go without a fight.(Story by hufflepirate, art by Aclyr)





	1. Caves, Comms, and Crash Sites

Hunk felt like he'd been watching Shiro sleep for hours, even though he knew it had only been a few minutes. He took a deep breath, trying to keep himself calm. It helped to think of it as sleep, instead of unconsciousness. It didn't help  _enough_. He turned away from Shiro, adjusting his position slightly as he leaned against the wall of the cave and turned to look out the entrance toward the crash site.

His bayard was sitting next to him. He hadn't lost it in the crash. As long as his twisted shoulder cooperated, he could shoot anyone who came after them before they could get close. It was fine. It was going to be fine. They were both going to be  _fine_. Nobody had come immediately running, so there was a chance that nobody had been around to see the crash, and until Shiro woke up, that was probably ok. Probably better. And he'd already thrown up once after the crash, so he was probably finished doing that for a while. Upsides. He took another deep breath, counting to himself to keep it steady.

He both did and didn't want to look over at Shiro. Maybe their leader was waking up and about to take control over the situation. That would be good. Maybe he was still unconscious and it was time to start being more worried about the fact that he was definitely going to wake up with a concussion.

Until he looked, it could really be either one.  _Shiro-dinger's Cat_ , he joked to himself, mouth quirking up at the corners as he continued not to look next to him. He tried to think who would appreciate that one. Pidge, maybe. Or Keith. Keith was funnier now that he was Galra.

It felt like another eternity as he watched out the entrance to the cave, listening to Shiro's breathing so intently that he could almost  _feel_  Shiro's body next to him even though they weren't touching. It was probably time to start worrying about how long Shiro had been out. Scratch that, it was  _definitely_  time to start worrying about how long Shiro had been out. But he wasn't sure he could take another thing to worry about right now, so he shoved the thought back out of his head. Shiro was fine. He was gonna come out of it any minute. They were both fine. They were gonna be  _fine_.

 

 

Shiro groaned next to him and a wave of relief rolled over him. He turned to find Shiro sitting up and brushing the dust out of his hair. "Hunk? Where are we?"

"I dunno," he answered, "But we're definitely lost, and we're definitely stranded."

"Stranded?"

"The pod is in about a thousand pieces and we're lucky to be alive. I can't reach the Castle or the lions, and I don't know where we are. I think we got pushed, like-" he had no idea how far off course they were, but it was definitely bad, so he just waved his hand at Shiro, "like definitely off course."

"Oh," Shiro answered, trying to get up. He wobbled when he was halfway to his feet and had to squat back down again. Hunk's eyebrows furrowed as Shiro reached behind his head, gingerly feeling at the bump where he'd hit it. His fingers came away a little bit bloody.

"You hit your head when we crashed," Hunk said, "I was worried."

Shiro smiled at him, but something about it didn't seem quite right. Hunk's heart sank. "I'm fine, Hunk. It's just a little bump."

It was  _not_  a little bump, and Shiro was still squatting instead of standing up. "Have you heard from the others?" he asked casually, like Hunk hadn't just told him that he couldn't.

"No," Hunk answered, trying to keep his voice level and not let on that he was terrified, the fear rolling icily down his spine. Shiro might do something drastic and that was no good. "I can't reach them. I don't know if it's a distance thing or if there's something interfering, but I can't reach the Castle or the lions."

"Ah." Shiro nodded, then wobbled heavily and had to lean on his arm to stay upright.

"Shiro, man, I think you're really hurt," Hunk suggested, "I think you should sit down."

Shiro's eyebrows furrowed, and for a moment he was intently focused on Hunk's face, but then it was too much, and his face relaxed again as he slid off his feet and sat back down. "You might be right about that."

Hunk was pretty sure he  _was_ right, but he wished he wasn't. He got up, the motion reminding him how much his hip hurt. He didn't think it was anything serious, just a bruise where he'd landed on it too hard, and it was enough to make him wince.

Usually Shiro responded to things like wincing, but he missed it this time, which didn't make Hunk feel any better about Shiro's condition. He moved over toward Shiro and knelt down again to look him in the eye, trying not to bend his hip too much as he readjusted himself in front of his leader.

"Let me check your eyes," he said gently, trying not to scare him. Shiro's pupils were the same size and looked normal, which was good.

Shiro's brow furrowed again and he tried to wave Hunk off. "It's ok. I'll be fine. We need to contact the others. What if they crashed, too?"

A chill ran down Hunk's spine. "Shiro, the others didn't come with us. They're still at the Castle. Do you remember that?"

Shiro shook his head, as if to clear it, then winced heavily, head reeling a little, and reached up toward the back of his head again. "Of course! Of course. They're still at the Castle. They didn't come. They - because -"

He didn't. He didn't remember, and Hunk knew it, and his heart sank. "Shiro, you really need to keep your head still. You _definitely_ have a concussion." And then, because he expected Shiro to fight him on it and didn't really want to argue, he kept talking, answering the question Shiro hadn't actually asked. "They didn't come because the Castle's defenses are completely down and we needed somebody to guard it while you and I got the parts to fix it."

"Right," Shiro said, "I remember that. Because we were in that fight and there was that explosion and Coran couldn't pull it up in time not to crash and - but we won that fight, I remember that, and we were gonna fly down and-" he seemed to be struggling, now, like the memories were getting foggy.

Hunk couldn't keep his face from looking nervous as he realized how much time Shiro had lost, but he hoped that if he filled in the blanks, Shiro would remember and things wouldn't be so scary. "And Allura was fine, but Coran's - Coran's not doing great," he explained, watching Shiro's reaction.

Shiro looked confused and worried, and Hunk's face fell a little farther. He didn't seem to be remembering, or he wouldn't be so upset. Or maybe he would. They never liked it when anyone was injured, even if things were gonna be ok.

"Pidge got the electricals back on," he continued, "So we got him into a cryopod, but it's working at half speed and he's gonna be in there a while. We couldn't leave him, but Allura and Pidge and I can't get the rest of the ship running again unless we can get some infracells and a new dynotherm to replace the one that got destroyed. The other spare parts we have on hand, but we came out here to get those."

Shiro was thinking, a little wrinkle of pain forming between his eyes at the strain. "So, can we still get those?"

Hunk frowned. "I'm not sure. I don't know where we landed. I don't even know what's  _on_  this planet. I was just trying to get us somewhere safe and out of the way in case there are Galra around. You were out for like 15 or 20 minutes, so there's a lot I just don't know yet."

Shiro half-nodded, but stopped the motion when he realized it would be bad. "Well, you did a good job," he said, forcing a smile onto his face that Hunk would almost have believed was genuine if Shiro weren't so concussed or if he'd done something actually brave like figuring out where they were instead of hiding in the nearest cave like a big coward.

He said, "Thanks, Shiro," anyway.

Shiro seemed to be thinking now, or at least trying to think, face screwed up with effort. Hunk bit his lip. Shiro should be resting his brain, and it made him nervous to think about Shiro straining himself too much, but he didn't exactly want to be in charge, either. He wasn't sure he could handle the pressure of being in charge, especially with Shiro needing so much help and everything so uncertain.

Hunk's chest felt tight, like something was crushing him. He was suddenly fully convinced they were going to die here, and had to shove the thought away before it came out of his mouth, because he couldn't stress Shiro out like that. His heart was racing and didn't feel like it was going in the right rhythm and he couldn't watch Shiro because he had to get himself under control, but that was hard, too. He should check Shiro's pulse, but he didn't trust his own pulse to keep time for him so he could judge it. Not when he didn't have a watch to steady out the passing of time.

Shiro groaned, drawing Hunk back out of this thoughts, and he turned to find Shiro's eyes closed. "I'm sorry Hunk," he said, "I can't - It's like it's all just fuzzy and I can't think."

Hunk let his face fall while Shiro wasn't looking. "I, uh - I mean, I guess I-" he started, looking down at his hands. They were shaking, which was  _perfect_ , and he hated it when he got this way, but Shiro needed him, so he stopped and took a deep breath. "It's ok," he said, "I'm gonna get us out of here."

He hoped Shiro kept his eyes shut for a while, so he wouldn't see how hard he was shaking, but then he remembered he was supposed to check how much Shiro opened his eyes. Or something about that. Or was it enough that he'd woken up by himself?

"Open your eyes for a second, Shiro," he said, "I'm not done checking them." That was true enough, maybe. Shiro opened his eyes, and Hunk felt relieved. "Follow my finger, ok?" he said, holding one finger up in front of Shiro's eyes and moving it side to side. Shiro rolled his head to keep looking, and Hunk couldn't tell if that was because his eyes weren't working right or because he hadn't given good enough directions. "No, just with your eyes, not your head."

"Oh," Shiro said, keeping his head still. His eyes seemed to move ok, without any weird skips or jerks, but then Hunk made one pass too many, just to make sure he wasn't missing anything in Shiro's eyes, and Shiro seemed to forget the directions again, turning his head. Great. This was just great.

Hunk bit his lip, thinking. He didn't have time to freak out. Shiro was in pretty bad shape, but he also probably (hopefully) wasn't dying. He couldn't remember what else he was supposed to check with brain injuries. It was something about eyes and confusion and - motion? Eye motion? General motion? Shiro was wobbly but moving, and that was good. He was in no state to take charge of this situation, and that was bad.

Hunk had never once wanted to be in charge. He'd spent plenty of time trying to avoid it, actually. He didn't want the pressure, and he didn't need the glory. But this wasn't about him, right now. It was about getting Shiro back home to the Castle and taken care of, somehow. Allura would know what to do, or Keith, or maybe even Lance, if he could just get them back to the castle.

And Pidge - suddenly something eased in Hunk's chest, loosening a little so that he could breathe more easily again. Pidge would know what to do right here and right now. Pidge would have already started building some kind of booster for their comms using the parts from the wreckage, and she would be trying to get a signal out to the lions in spite of whatever was blocking their signal now. And that? That he might actually be able to do.

 

* * *

 

Lance kicked angrily at the back of the communications console while Pidge double-checked that everything was working right through the panel in the front. For once, she wasn’t sure she minded the kicking. It was useless and wouldn't fix anything, but so was what she was doing. They all knew whatever had taken Shiro and Hunk out of radio contact was on the other end and not theirs, and they all knew Pidge's fiddling with wires was futile.

"And you're  _sure_ they can get a signal through while you're doing this, right?" Keith asked for the second time in the last five minutes.

"Yes! Stop nagging!" she snapped back.

"Sorry!"

 

 

 

Allura was checking on Coran again, even though they all knew he wouldn't be healthy enough to come out of the pod for another quintant, or maybe even two, unless they could get all the systems back to normal. The bridge felt too empty with just the three of them, and the boys felt too close to her, breathing down her neck, and she just needed the space to think her way out of this.

Keith uncrossed his arms, but then seemed not to know what to do with his hands.

"What could have knocked out their communications?" he asked, and then before she could say anything, "I mean  _knocked out_ , not interrupted. You said they might have just been interrupted, but it's been at least a varga and they should have been back up by now if it was just an interruption, right?" She nodded, but that was all the answer she had. She didn't know what had happened, but she was sure it couldn't be good.

She ran out of wires to check and stood up. "I don't know," she told Keith, "but it's a bad sign, and I think all four of us need to talk about what to do next."

"We can't just leave the bridge and the comms, though," Lance interjected, "I know it's been a long time but-" he trailed off, because it was clear that neither of them was about to argue with him.

Pidge and the boys stared each other down for a few awkward seconds, and then finally Pidge broke the silence. "I'll go get Allura. You guys keep listening for the others."

She felt bad taking the chance for a little walk away from Keith, but she needed to clear her head. What could have gone wrong? And where were Hunk and Shiro? She tried not to think too hard about how those first hours of the Kerberos mission's failure had felt, but it was hard when this feeling, part fear, part sorrow, part helplessness, was sinking into her chest again.

She pushed her legs to go faster, trying to lose herself in the motion as she jogged toward the medical bay. It didn't really work.

 

* * *

 

Taking apart his helmet to get the comm tech out in the open was easier than Hunk had been expecting, especially as the knowledge that he had a plan now calmed him down enough to stop his fingers from shaking. Figuring out how to amplify the signal was going to be harder. The problem was that he didn't really know what was wrong with their comms to begin with. It clearly wasn't a wiring problem or anything like that, which meant it was something outside the comms that he had to find and address somehow. And for that, he was going to need supplies.

"Ok," he said, turning toward Shiro and trying to keep his voice calm, even as his hands started to sweat, "I'm gonna head back to the wreckage and see when I can salvage that might help us contact the others. You stay here and rest."

Shiro had been lying down on his side, eyes closed, but at the sound of Hunk's voice, he started stirring. "No, Hunk, I can-"

"No, you can't. Or, at least, you shouldn't," Hunk told him, reaching out a hand and laying it on Shiro's shoulder to stop him, "You don't mess with head injuries. I'll be ok."

"Take your bayard," Shiro said.

"Of course."

"No, no," Shiro said, shaking his head as he tried to get up again and then wincing, hard. "Let me - ow - maybe not."

"I'll be fine," Hunk told him, trying to sound certain even though he wasn't, "And I won't be long. Just stay here and rest. I'll be within sight of the cave, so I can come back if anybody comes along."

"Yeah." Shiro didn't sound happy about that, but Hunk would take agreement where he could get it.

He stood up, making a face as his hip moved that he hoped Shiro couldn't see, and then tested out his twisted shoulder. It still hurt, but he used two hands with his bayard anyway, so if the other arm took most of the weight, it was probably going to be ok. Probably. He felt vaguely nauseous, but he could fight through that. And at least he hadn't hit his head.

He took a deep breath, steeling himself for the first step back out into the open, where anything could happen. He had to do this. He had to get them out of here. He had to get Shiro to the medical bay at the Castle, even if it was still working at half speed. He had to get those parts, so Shiro and Coran could really be taken care of and they could get out of here.

But first, he had to poke through the wreckage and salvage what he could. He could do that. That was a smaller task anyway. Smaller. Easier. No big deal. His heart was racing and his palms were sweating, but those things were just his body lying to him. This was going to be fine. Nothing to be afraid of. Nothing but the small possibility that a bunch of Galra soldiers were secretly watching the crash for returning survivors. And that was probably just crazy thinking. Paranoia. He didn't have time for paranoia right now.

He checked that his bayard was where it was supposed to be, took one last deep breath, and stepped out of the cave before he could change his mind. He had a good view of the area around the crash, and they were definitely still alone, which was good. They were farther from the crash than he'd realized in his initial panic of trying to get to safety, and that made him a little nervous, but he could probably still make it without losing sight of the cave, so at least there was that.

 

 

Now that he could take better stock of their surroundings, he was concerned by the lack of obvious water near them, though he thought some of the plants around them might be edible. Maybe. They would at least burn, which would be good as it started to get dark. It wasn't a full desert, but the vegetation was scrubby, and he wouldn't expect much rain here. "Semi-arid" was the word for it.  The Tex-Mex of climates. Most people thought of it as desert, but it was actually its own thing. Not that his 9th-grade science teacher had much appreciated that answer when she asked for a definition of "semi-arid," but it didn't matter now. He'd take a semi-arid climate over an arid one any day. He'd also have picked something with more cover and more edible plants, if he'd been allowed to pick.

As he walked out to the crash site, counting his steps and trying to estimate the distance between the crash site and the cave, he tried to focus on the positives.  If they'd crashed farther out on the plain in front of him, there wouldn't have been anywhere to take Shiro to get him out of the sun, and there wouldn't be anywhere to run back to now, if someone came along.  They'd gotten lucky, second-choice climate or not, and he was determined to make the most of things.  As long as his heart was still beating, he was still alive, and he'd just have to keep pushing on.

From the far end of the crash, he could tell that their cave was at the foot of some kind of large land formation, a mesa or a butte or a plateau or something. He knew all the big-flat-thing words, but he could never remember which ones were what size or shape. Keith would probably know, but Keith was terrible at differentiating between large-grouping-of-trees words, so they were probably even, if you took it all together.

Among the wreckage, he had things to focus on, and that was easier. There was a lot that was salvageable. He wasn't sure what he needed, exactly, or how much could fit into the cave, but a lot of it was salvageable, and that was what counted. He lost himself in the problem, trying to imagine the machine he might build and weigh the relative usefulness of the parts he found, and he felt himself calming down, the persistent buzzing nervousness he'd felt since the crash retreating into the background of his awareness and his stomach settling again.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been working before he thought to check on Shiro, but it was apparently too long. As soon as he glanced around to check the cave entrance, he realized Shiro was up and moving and he hadn't noticed, too absorbed in what he was doing. Shiro was at the other end of the crash site, looking down at the pieces of the pod like he was confused.

Hunk scrambled to his feet, ignoring the pain in his hip as he hurried to make sure Shiro was alright. He was torn between hope that Shiro was back to himself and would be able to take over and fear that he wasn't ok and was pushing himself too hard. For once, he was pretty sure the fear was the more rational of his feelings.

When he caught up to Shiro, the other man's face lit up. "Hunk! There you are!"

"Yeah, Shiro, I've been here. You were supposed to wait for me in the cave."

"In the - yeah, the cave. I was in the cave. But we needed - what do we need?"

"We need parts so I can build a better communicator," Hunk said patiently, reaching an arm out to steady Shiro. He looked more stable than he'd been earlier, but he was still a little wobbly, and Hunk felt better having a solid grip on his elbow, just in case. "But I'm getting them. You're supposed to rest."

"No, Hunk, I can help. I'm not just gonna sit there and let you put yourself in danger." This time, Shiro didn't shake his head, like he had remembered he shouldn't.

"It's ok, Shiro. It's so flat that I can see for miles. It's safe." He surprised himself by actually believing that. He hadn't felt safe when he left the cave, but no one else had come to check on the crash, and he hadn't minded being out there on his own, once he was there.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm positive. Just go back to the cave and get some sleep. You're supposed to be resting your brain."

Shiro's eyes focused a little better this time, as he studied Hunk's face, and Hunk breathed slowly, trying to keep his residual nervousness from showing on his face. It must have worked, because Shiro closed his eyes, leaning a little harder into him, and then said, "Ok."

Hunk thought he should probably walk Shiro back to the cave, but he wanted to go back for the parts he'd already collected, and that would only take a minute.

"Can you make it back on your own?" he asked Shiro. "I'll just be a minute grabbing my other stuff. You seem kind of wobbly."

"No, I'm ok," Shiro insisted, looking up and flashing a smile at him like that was going to cover for the fact that he was definitely still concussed.

Hunk bit his lip, not sure how much to trust Shiro's judgment. But it  _would_ be just a minute. "Ok. I'll see you back at the cave. I think I'm gonna have to do a couple of trips. There's a lot more salvageable stuff than I thought there would be. I'll be just a minute."

He went back to get the pile of parts he'd left behind, hurrying so that he didn't have to leave Shiro unattended for too long. He scooped the parts up and turned around, only to find that Shiro had drifted sideways, headed for the wrong part of the cliffs. He felt sick to his stomach. He'd been right. Shiro was mobile, but he wasn't well. He shouldn't have let him walk back on his own.

Luckily - or unluckily, depending on how you looked at it - Shiro was still moving slowly, a little wobbly on his feet. Hunk felt his throat tightening a little as he hurried to catch up. He was moving fast enough to make noise, and Shiro turned as soon as he was in hearing range.

"Where's the cave?" Shiro asked, sounding genuinely frightened, and not just confused, for the first time since they'd crashed. "I can't find it."

"It's this way," he told him, gesturing with his head since his hands were so full, "Over here."

Shiro smiled shakily. "Right! Right! Got it." He was trying to mask the fear, but it was too late. Hunk knew what fear sounded like, and that had been it. He caught the rest of the way up, stomach sinking a little farther as he watched Shiro swaying while he tried to stand still.

"Grab onto my shoulder," he said to Shiro, "Then I can help you stabilize and you won't get lost."

He didn't really expect Shiro to do it, but up close Shiro looked haggard and exhausted, like this latest attempt to move had taken more out of him than he could hide. He grabbed for Hunk's shoulder like it was a lifeline, and Hunk walked them slowly back to the cave, watching Shiro's feet to make sure he didn't get too tangled up and they weren't going too fast.

Back in the cave, Shiro sat too fast and sighed too shakily, and Hunk realized with a rush that there was no way he'd have the heart to leave him again.

"I tell you what, Shiro," he said, "Why don't I stay here with you and organize this stuff, and then maybe I'll go looking for specific parts later." He had most of the ship's comm relay, or what had survived of it, anyway, and the relief on Shiro's face made his choice instantly feel worth it.  If he needed to go out again, he could do it after Shiro fell asleep.

"Ok," Shiro said, closing his eyes for a moment.

"Just lay down, Shiro. It's gonna be ok. You need sleep."

"I'm sorry, Hunk. I should be more helpful."

"No. You should be taking care of yourself."

"Yes sir."

Hunk wasn't sure if that was a joke or not, but Shiro laid down after he'd said it, so it was probably alright either way. Hunk watched him drift off to sleep, even though he knew he should probably be sorting spare parts. He felt compressed, like everything was coming in to crush him, but when he looked at Shiro, his face relaxing as he slept, it was almost like he could breathe again.

"I'm gonna get us out of here," he whispered to Shiro, knowing he was too asleep to hear, "I promise. I'm not gonna let anything else happen to you." And then he could fall apart, if he needed to. But only then.


	2. Watching and Waiting

"Look, I know the Castle's defenses are down, but you've been working on it for days! Can't we just-"

"No!" Pidge snapped, interrupting Lance before he could finish, "That was the whole point of sending Hunk and Shiro to begin with! We _can't_ just fix it."

She was already tired of this fight, which hadn't let up since she and Allura walked onto the bridge. She was glad they'd talked things out on their way back to the guys. It still wasn't easy getting Lance and Keith to agree that they needed to wait a little longer.

"We can't just _leave_ them out there, either," Keith said, voice sharp, "We can't form Voltron without them. We're practically sitting ducks."

Lance turned on him, whirling sideways, "What do you mean, we 'can't form Voltron'? _That's_ what you're worried about?"

"I'm just trying-"

"Then let us _wait_ a little longer," Pidge interrupted.

" _They could be_ _hurt_ ," Lance bellowed, shouting over both of them, "They could be getting _tortured_. We have to go after them!"

"Yeah," Pidge shot back, "And so could my family. But you're all ok with waiting on _them_." She wasn't sure where that had come from, but there it was, out of her mouth, and the others fell silent for long enough that she knew they must have noticed the blush creeping across her cheeks.

Keith looked for a moment like he wanted to say something, but they'd had that fight before, too, the fight about how Voltron was more important than her family, and when she glared at him, he kept his mouth shut.

"Paladins," Allura said calmly, back stiff and voice icy, just like it had been since the others started arguing with her about the plan, "I want Shiro and Hunk back as much as the rest of you. But Coran is _hurt_ , the Castle would be  _defenseless_ without anyone who can pilot the lions, and we can't risk losing any more of you until we're sure it's the only way. It's _just_ a quintant. Whatever's happening, they can hold out for one quintant. I'm sure of it."

" _How_ , Allura? How are you so sure?" Lance's voice had gone soft, but it somehow wasn't any easier to listen to than the yelling.

"Shiro's gotten away from the Galra before. I know he had help, but he  _did_ it. He _survived_. And he can survive again. None of you are the paladins I would have asked for, but you've proven yourselves over and over. They _will_ be alright.  I _know_ it."

"But it's _Hunk_ ," Lance said, worried, "It's _Hunk_ , and I should be there to help him out 'cause he's - y'know - _Hunk_."

They did know. Hunk hadn't wanted to come out here to begin with. He'd wanted to stay at the Garrison. He'd wanted to stay where it was safe, to retreat to the kitchen, to let the adults handle it. But he'd changed since the Balmera, and they knew that, too. Didn't they?

"Hunk's-" Keith started, sounding calmer and more pensive. Lance whirled around to face him like he was getting ready for a fight if Keith said something bad about his best friend. Instead, Keith finished, "He's a lot tougher than he seems. I mean, sometimes he gets in his own way, but - but he was a good partner when we went to get the scaultrite from the weblum."

The last of the fight drained out of Lance when he sensed that Keith wasn't going to fight this with him anymore. He scowled, but he'd gone from a fighting stance to a dissatisfied slouch. "Maybe. But I still don't like it."

"I don't either," Allura admitted, "But we can't afford to risk what we have left. Not yet. After another quintant, we'll know they aren't going to get back in contact. We'll know they need help. And then we can go get them."

"Somehow," Pidge muttered.

"Somehow," Allura repeated, more confidently, and with a fire in her eyes that made Pidge feel glad, again, that they weren't often on opposing sides.

 

* * *

 

Hunk wasn't sure if Shiro usually snored, or if that was another consequence of the crash, but it was a reassuring sound either way, telling him Shiro was still alive while he worked on the comms on the other side of the cave. He had a plan now, and if it wasn't a perfect plan without more info, it was better than no plan at all. He'd gone out on two more salvage runs, quick ones with specific parts in mind, and with a specific plan for stripping extra wire out of the wreckage. But he was pretty sure he was finally done with that, and Shiro had slept through those runs without wandering off, and things were getting better.

He stood up, frowning as his hip reminded him it was bruised, and stretched his back, trying not to move his shoulder too much. He was making good progress on the comms, but there was only so long he could spend hunched over before the twisted shoulder started complaining. He'd been testing it out, rolling it to see how far he could move it, and he didn't think it was a tear or a sprain. That didn't stop it from sending spikes of pain down to his elbow if he wasn't careful.

He glanced over toward the mouth of the cave, studying the landscape in front of him. 

On the second trip out, he'd realized how obvious their footprints were, especially where Shiro had wandered off away from the wreckage, and while he was taking a break from the comms, it might be a good idea to double check and make sure he hadn't missed any footprints when he was trying to sweep them away. It would also be good to check for any plants that might be edible before it started to get dark. He had a kit in his side pouch that he could use to test them for poison, and he could collect more branches from some of the short, gnarly shrubs around them so that he and Shiro could have a fire.

He turned to check on Shiro again, wondering if he should wake him up to tell him where he was going. He might be longer, this time, especially if none of the closest plants were edible. But he also didn't want Shiro wandering off again, and he probably needed his rest, with the concussion. He bit his lip, looking down at his injured friend, when a noise outside drew his attention back to the front of the cave.

Creeping forward, he squatted down in the cave entrance, tucking himself up against the wall, out of the way, and poked his head out of the cave to see a set of Galra speeders coming around the side of the mesa. He pulled back before they could spot him, heart racing as he hunkered down farther.

 

 

His first thought was that he should wake Shiro up, but before he could get back to him, he'd remembered that there was nothing Shiro could do while he was still this disoriented. He bit his lip. He was on his own. He took a deep breath, looking around himself at the cave. "Ok," he whispered, "Ok, what would Shiro do? If he weren't asleep or concussed, what would he do?"

He would hide. He'd find a way to keep the Galra from seeing them until it was safe. He'd probably have some kind of flashback that told him when to quit hiding and fight, but even if they could count on it, flashbacks were probably bad for Shiro's brain right now. So hiding was it.

He couldn't cover the cave entrance without the Galra seeing, not now, so their best bet was to get as far back in the cave as they could and hope it looked empty, or that the Galra didn't come looking for them. He could do that. And he could have his bayard ready in case that wasn't enough. He needed to get the comm stuff away from the entrance, but Shiro was higher priority. If nothing else, he could defend the back of the cave easier than the front.

He dragged Shiro back toward the rear of the cave, shushing him when he started to stir.

"Hunk, what-"

"It's ok. There are some Galra troops coming to check out the wreck, but I wiped out our footprints."

Shiro processed that faster than he'd been processing most things and scrambled to his feet faster than Hunk thought he should. "Get behind me, I -"

"You're _concussed_." Hunk whispered, reaching forward to steady Shiro and get closer so that he could be heard, "And you're being too loud. Just get as far back as you can and stay quiet."

"I can't let you-"

"I'm just gonna get the comm stuff out of view. They're still pretty far out. We have time." He really, really hoped they had time. He really, really hoped they weren't gonna have to fight this one. His palms were sweating already.

He hated arguing with Shiro, but luckily, he didn't have to. Shiro gave in, making his way to the back of the cave. "Hurry, Hunk. You've gotta get out of sight, too."

He knew that. He was pretty sure his whole body knew it, head to toe, but Shiro didn't need to know about the fact that he had goose bumps all over and was worried he might start shaking again.

He collected up the pieces of their helmets and his extra materials, momentarily disappointed that everything was getting tangled up until he remembered the very real danger in store if he didn't get everything out of sight. Once he had everything, he hurried to the very back of the cave, where Shiro was watching anxiously, half-leaning against the wall.

"Good," Shiro said, reaching out to grab at Hunk's arms as soon as he was in reach. "Here, get behind me."

 _If only_ , Hunk thought to himself, putting down all the comm pieces just far enough away that they wouldn't step on them. Shiro kept pulling at his arms, trying to get Hunk to move behind him, but he was still disoriented enough that he was mostly just making it harder to put the comms down. Once the parts were stashed safely away, Hunk wrapped his hands around Shiro's wrists. "No," he whispered firmly, "You've gotta stay behind me. I have a ranged weapon and you have a concussion."

"No, Hunk, I have to _protect_ you. That's my _job_." Shiro sounded just as firm as ever, but something about his gaze still wasn't right, and he was still using the wall for balance, and Hunk couldn't let him take over. He _couldn't_.

"No," he hissed back, "It's not. Not right now." The Galra speeders were closer now, close enough to hear even from the back of the cave instead of the front, and Hunk had made his decision.

It had never occurred to him before that if he had to pick Shiro up and move him, he probably could, but now that their backs were literally up against the wall, he was intensely aware that if Shiro got in front of him, he could pick him up and put him behind him. Shiro might struggle, and then he'd worry about hurting his head, but he also knew Shiro would never use his Galra hand against him, and that was good enough for now. "I'm not going to let you get in front of me, Shiro," he said firmly.

"Hunk," Shiro said, pleading with him so earnestly that Hunk almost changed his mind. But no. He couldn't do that. He couldn't let Shiro make himself worse. Not when he had his bayard _right here_ and could protect them both.

"No," he whispered back, "You can help me keep lookout, but you have to stay behind me. You have to stay where they can't see us and I can shoot them before they get to you if they come in."

"Lookout," Shiro repeated back, face relaxing a little. "I can do that. But you have to let me fight if it comes down to it."

Hunk bit his lip. He couldn't let Shiro fight. But he _could_ make sure it didn't come down to it. And if he couldn't, then Shiro's concussion would be the least of their worries, anyway. "Ok," he agreed, "But only if they get past me. I'm the one with the blaster."

Shiro squeezed his arm. "Deal."

Hunk nodded back, and then helped Shiro down to the ground, letting him sit upright against the back of the cave so he could see better. For a while, he stood in front of Shiro, facing the cave mouth, but there was only so long his injured shoulder could take the weight of his bayard, even with help from his other arm.

Finally, he settled down to sit instead, resting his blaster in his lap where it didn't pull on his shoulder so much. Shiro reached for his other shoulder, squeezing it encouragingly. He looked exhausted again, like even sitting up was too much, but Hunk couldn't ask him to lay back down and sleep again. Not when they could still hear the Galra troops picking through the wreckage outside, shouting back and forth just barely too far away for them to make out the words.

They settled in for a long wait, straining their ears for any hint that the Galra were headed their way. The sound of the speeders starting up again after several vargas of listening sent a chill down Hunk's spine. His mind raced to explain the sounds, leaping too quickly from "they're probably leaving" to "they're probably making a run at the cave and trying to get in before we can fight back," and he felt his stomach starting to turn.

He picked up his bayard again, training it at the cave entrance and keeping his eyes peeled, but then the speeders turned away and the sounds of them faded into the distance. It was totally silent for at least a minute before he put the blaster down again.

Shiro sighed with relief behind him, but as much as he wanted to, Hunk couldn't trust the quiet. He still felt too nervous, convinced the Galra were somehow still out there or had left a sentry behind in the dark to watch for people returning to the wreck.

"We're ok," Shiro whispered, and Hunk turned to look at him. He looked exhausted, and his grip seemed weaker when Hunk offered him a hand and he squeezed it. It was probably meant to be reassuring, but it wasn't.

"I think you can probably get some sleep," Hunk whispered, "I think they're gone. But we still shouldn't have a fire."

"You need sleep, too," Shiro answered softly, "I can stay up."

That was a lie, but Hunk didn't want to argue. "I'm ok," he said instead, "I'm still full of adrenaline, I think. I'll wake you up if I need you to take watch."

Shiro wrinkled his forehead. "Promise me."

"I promise."

"Ok." Shiro looked and sounded relieved as he eased himself back down to the floor of the cave and fell asleep, soft snoring resuming quickly. Hunk rearranged again, folding his bayard up and putting it on the ground next to him, where either of them could technically reach it if necessary.

He wished he could fold himself up in a ball, tucking his knees to his chest and his arms around them, but his hip and shoulder would never stand for it, so he stood up instead, stretching out muscles that were already not happy about the cold in the cave. It was going to be a long night, and he didn't envision getting much sleep.


	3. Morning Dawns Eternal

When the world outside the cave started to get light, Hunk pulled himself to his feet and crept slowly toward the cave mouth, leaving Shiro asleep behind him. He'd let Shiro take watch for maybe 45 minutes in the middle of the night, just because he'd promised, but he'd slept fitfully, still too worried there might be Galra outside to really relax and still feeling a general buzz of anxiety all over. There hadn't been much point to sleeping, and Shiro hadn't even fought him when he said it wasn't worth making Shiro worse to get sleep that didn't make him feel rested.

He peeked out the cave entrance, keeping himself pressed up against the wall, just in case anyone was looking.

They weren't. The landscape in front of him was just as scrubby and sparse as it had been before, and the wreckage looked like it had been turned over a little bit, but wasn't gone. There were footprints everywhere, enough that if he went back to the wreckage he didn't think anyone would be able to tell his footprints from the ones the Galra had left behind.

They were gone. They hadn't left sentries, and they hadn't left any obvious cameras or sensors. He'd been worried all night for nothing. He let himself take a deep breath, breathing in the morning air.

It was still cool out, but it was warming up from the cold of the night, which was good, and the air blowing in from the plain was a little warmer than the air in the cave. Their armor helped keep their core temperatures up, but it hadn't helped him sleep to know that if he could see better, he'd probably be seeing his breath. He thought once Shiro woke up, he might take him outside to sit in the sun for a little bit and warm up.

For now, though, it was a new day, and there were a thousand things to think about and a thousand things to do. He was starving. They'd eaten the emergency rations out of their pockets last night, and he should probably start figuring out if any of the tough-looking plants out on the plain were edible. He thought, or at least hoped, that Shiro was probably with it enough not to go wandering off again, and it would be productive, a good thing to do while his friend was asleep.

He should figure out where the Galra had come from. He should finish rebuilding their comms. He should check Shiro's response times again, to see how the concussion was doing. He should do a lot of things. He took a deep breath, trying to ease the persistent feeling of nervousness that hadn't left since the crash. He felt like it had settled into his spine and under his breastbone, an aching, pulsing _thing_ that occasionally reached out farther and tried to crush him.

He glanced over his shoulder at Shiro, still fast asleep beside the back wall of the cave, even though he was sure it was coldest there.

Maybe he wouldn't do any of those things yet. Maybe he'd just take the time for himself, while Shiro was out. Maybe the rest could wait.

He stepped out into the sunshine and turned his face up to it, feeling it sink into his pores. The sun here seemed a little farther away than on earth, but the air was thin and he could still feel the sunlight against his skin. Maybe he could take a moment. Maybe he was allowed that. Maybe he could work better if he didn't feel like there was a living thing inside him, crawling up and down his spine and trying to keep him trapped and afraid.

He glanced over at Shiro again, and his friend hadn't stirred.

He could take a moment for himself. Just a little bit. Just enough to keep going.

He hadn't done yoga for a while, but as he pulled off his boots and stripped off the top layers of his armor so that he had a better range of motion, he could feel himself calming down already. He'd never been one for public yoga classes, but he'd learned enough of it to be therapeutic. His shoulder was doing a little better today, definitely just tweaked and not torn or sprained, and his hip was still dully painful, but he was sure, now, that it wasn't serious.

He took another step out into the sunlight, digging his toes into the soft dust of the plain.

He didn't want to push himself too much. Not when his shoulder and hip hurt, and not when the point was just to feel good. He rolled his head, stretching out his neck, and then settled his feet into the ground, checking his weight distribution until he could feel all four corners of his feet against the earth. He stood up straight, pressing upward through his body and lengthening his spine, and breathed in and out, letting his eyes fall shut. Maybe this was enough. Maybe this could be enough.

But it wasn't, and he needed to stretch out a little farther, probably, and his shoulder didn't like it when his arms were straight up in the air, but he held it for a little bit anyway, breathing in and out. It wasn't a serious injury. He wanted to be calmer. He let it go when he didn't want to keep the pose anymore, letting himself just feel for a little while.

He kept breathing, shifting into the second warrior pose, which he thought might not be too bad on his shoulder. It was harder than usual keeping his arm up, parallel to the ground, but it felt good to lunge forward, and he'd fought through bruises before. He felt a little more stable, breathing deeply and letting himself _be_ , and it was easier to lose himself in the sunshine and the morning air. He straightened up and switched sides, his hip throbbing a little in this direction, but it had been good on the other side and it would be good on this side, if he could keep it up and keep breathing.

He would usually do downward-facing dog on a day like this, so that if his hands still shook with nerves afterward, he could pretend his arms were tired from holding him up, but it hadn't  _actually_ made him shake for a long time, and being able to pretend wasn't worth how much it was going to hurt his shoulder to hold himself up.

Instead, he went through a couple more of his favorite standing poses, not pushing too hard. He thought he might relax more if he laid down or sat, but he didn't want that, really.  He just wanted - something. He wanted some kind of energy and calm, and he felt right on the edge of it, but it wouldn't come.

He stopped when Shiro woke up and called out from behind him.

"Yeah, I'm right here," he shouted back, "I'm right here. I'm coming." He settled his shoulders, taking one last deep breath of the cool morning air, and turned back into the cave.

 

* * *

 

Pidge checked the bridge first thing in the morning, before she went for breakfast, before she checked on her lion, even before she went to the bathroom. She'd taken a fairly early watch last night, and there was a chance, just a little one, just _enough_ , that they'd heard something.  She'd gone to bed certain that they wouldn't, but maybe - just maybe.

They hadn't. It was written all over Lance's face as soon as she walked into the room. He shook his head at her, and she almost ducked back out of the room, but she couldn't leave him there looking so sad.  Not when she remembered that he'd taken the middle watch, so if he was up, it meant he hadn't gone back to bed afterward. 

"I guess we're going, then, huh?" she asked him.

"Yeah, I guess we are. I hope they're ok."

She wasn't sure if that was a dig at her for making them wait, or if it was just a statement. It didn't feel pointed, but Lance looked tired, so maybe he just wasn't up to making it really sting. "Me too," she said.

Silence fell between them, and when it had stretched a little too long, she excused herself to go to the bathroom and get some food and think through what she knew. It felt good to be able to start putting together a rescue plan, but not as good as it would have felt to hear from Hunk and Shiro.

She stopped for a moment outside of Keith's door, but if he was already awake she'd rather not talk just yet, and if he wasn't ready to talk, either, she should let him have some peace while he could.


	4. The Best-Laid Plans

Hunk squatted on top of the mesa, wishing he'd waited until dark to try to sneak into the compound. It wasn't as far away as they'd expected, so here he was, leaning into the wind in the bright daylight and second-guessing himself. He'd gotten the helmet comms to reach each other, but he wasn't sure how long the connection would last, and he still couldn't reach the Castle or the lions. He needed to keep going before the comms shorted again and he was on his own.

He couldn't believe he'd let Shiro convince him to climb up here instead of going around, but the few miles of walking it had taken to go across the top of the mesa had turned out to be a much shorter distance, so he supposed that was lucky. There didn't seem to be any security up here, so even luckier. Maybe the Galra didn't expect anyone to be coming over the mesa. Maybe they didn't expect anyone to be coming at _all_. The outpost was the smallest one he'd ever seen, and he wasn't even sure what its purpose was. Maybe it didn't have one, and was just a remnant from some other project they'd stopped by now.

Or maybe he'd missed their security and he was about to get caught. They could have underground bunkers and be secretly watching him on invisible cameras right now. He wouldn't know for sure until something happened, and by then, it would be too late. But he couldn't afford to dwell on that.

"I'm here," he said into his comm, as softly as he thought he could without having Shiro lose him on the other end. "It's just a single main building and a couple of outbuildings. One of them looks like a storage warehouse, and the other one's maybe barracks? It's hard to tell from up here. Even the main building's pretty close to the mesa, so I don't have a good angle."

He bit his lip, looking from building to building. They needed information if they were going to be able to get out of here, but they also needed supplies if they were going to be stuck for a while. He'd been able to find a few edible plants, but if they were going to survive on hunting and gathering, they couldn't do it for long without moving away from their cave. There were signs of small animals, but no large ones that would keep them for a while, and the vegetation wasn't thick enough to keep them fed for long before it was picked clean.

More pressingly, they needed water. They'd had water pouches with them as emergency stores, but they weren't meant to last them longer than a day, and they hadn't.  It was hard to tell what part of Shiro's dizziness and head pain came from dehydration and what came from the concussion, but Hunk was starting to feel headachy himself, and he hadn't hit his head at all. They needed water today, and if they didn't get it by tomorrow, he wasn't sure he could keep them alive. Especially not when it was this hot. The sun had felt nice this morning, but now it was pounding down on him, and if it weren't for his helmet sucking away the moisture, he was pretty sure he'd be sweating into his eyes by now.

Either the storage building or the barracks would probably be the best place to get supplies, but it would be harder to get the information he needed if he was hauling things around with him. It would slow him down and he couldn't afford to be slow. If he got caught, he'd have to tell them where Shiro was, because Shiro would die if he was left on his own in the state he was in now. Then they'd _both_ be trapped with the Galra, and who knew what would happen to them after that? He couldn't let that happen.

"I'm gonna go for the information first, 'cause that's in the far building," he told Shiro, "And then I'll figure out supplies on my way back. We need a lot of stuff, and I'm not sure how I'm gonna carry it. I might have to make some choices and then come back here later, maybe."

The thought of sneaking in _twice_ almost made his stomach turn on him, but Shiro's voice steadied him. "Sounds good, Hunk," he said, sounding exhausted, "You're so smart. D'we tell you that? We should. You'll get the right stuff." Shiro had been doing better earlier, after he'd eaten, but now he sounded rough again. Hunk had only been able to strengthen the audio link, not the video, but he didn't need to see Shiro to know he wasn't doing well.

That was it, then. He needed to get back to the cave to check in on Shiro. He needed water and food for both of them, and a plan to get them out of here, and he couldn't get any of that unless he went down there and broke into the outpost. He set his jaw, double checked his bayard, and started scanning the side of the mesa for a way down.

After a few minutes of prowling the cliff's edge, he found what he needed, a little gap in the side of the mesa where he could climb down mostly shielded from the outpost's field of vision. The thought of leaping off the side and trusting his jets to catch him was more than his stomach could handle, so he didn't linger on it. Climbing would be fine. It would take longer, but it would be fine. Right?

This morning, he'd questioned the impulse to give Shiro more of the food he'd managed to scrounge together, but now he was glad he'd forced most of it on Shiro. He was too nervous to be climbing on a full stomach.

He knelt down at the edge of the cliff, checking again to make sure no one was outside at the outpost, and then started climbing down, palms going sweaty inside his gloves as he gripped the edge of the cliff and felt downward for a foothold.

Halfway down, his foot slipped off of the thin ledge he'd found for it and he was too surprised to keep himself from falling. His armor's jet boosters kicked in just in time, stopping him before he hit the ground, but he felt his stomach trying to turn on him. He needed to move, to make sure the Galra couldn't see him, but he also needed to take deep breaths through his nose to settle himself down.

_Three breaths_ , he told himself, _three breaths and then the ground. And I'm not gonna throw up_.

The counting helped, and he set his feet onto the ground without puking. A moment later, he felt sure enough of it to call Shiro again. "Ok, I'm down," he said.

All he heard in response was static. "Quiznak," he muttered to himself. Shiro was the best at sneaking around Galra places, but there was nothing he could do about that, now. Maybe the signal would come back once he got a little farther away from the side of the mesa. Maybe it was some kind of interference. Maybe Shiro was about to cut back in. Or maybe not.

He let himself wait another 30 seconds before he gave up on getting a response. That was fine. He was fine. He'd known this was a possibility. He'd only been able to beef up their comms by so much, and he'd known it might not be enough. Shiro would still be there when he got back to the top of the mesa. He had to be.

Setting his jaw, he slid forward to look around the edge of his shallow crack in the mesa, immediately relieved to see that no one seemed to be coming toward him. The outpost was quiet, without any motion he could see. There wasn't much cover out here, which was problem one. Problem two was that he had no idea what kind of security they had on the doors or inside the building. But he didn't need to worry about that until he'd solved problem one.

This would be a lot easier if he could just disguise himself as one of the Galra, like Allura could. But then he realized that was it. A disguise. He just needed a disguise. He allowed himself a half smile.

"Ok, new plan," he said, half to himself and half on the off chance that Shiro was getting him even though he couldn't hear an answer, "I'm gonna start in the barracks, because that's probably where their extra uniforms are. Maybe I can put together some kind of face disguise, too. It won't be as good as Allura's, but it'll make it easier to sneak around. And safer."

Getting to the barracks was still a problem, but if he could get to the warehouse without being seen, he could use it for cover before making a break toward the other building. He took out his bayard, holding it out in front of him so that he could start blasting at a moment's notice if he needed to, and got ready to run.

He stayed as close as he could to the cliff side, hoping that anyone who came out of one of the buildings wouldn't look his way. The shrubs were a little thicker here than on their side of the mesa, but they still weren't good cover. Luckily, no one seemed to be out and about, and he made it to the shadow of the warehouse without any trouble.

He darted across to the side of the building and snuck along the wall, feeling safer now that he was between the building and the cliff, shielded from view. He'd had good luck so far, and he could afford a moment to take a deep breath and steady himself.

He rounded the corner and snuck his way down toward the front of the building, getting more nervous the farther he got from the mesa, but he was really in it, now. There was no going back. He had to get as close as he could to the barracks before he made a break for them, and the front corner was the closest.

When he turned the next corner to check for motion and came face to face with a sentry, he was already on edge, ready for a fight.

The Galra shouted in surprise, but Hunk moved on instinct, running toward the sentry with a yell before he realized he should have shot first. The sentry seemed just as confused, though, too surprised to shoot, and then they were in close quarters and it was too late to worry about should-have-dones.

"Halt!"

Hunk thought fast, swinging the heavy back end of his bayard up toward the sentry's head with both hands. The alien dodged backward out of the way, raising his blaster, but Hunk stepped forward and got his right hand on the blaster's nose at the last second. He pulled it sideways, hard, and the guard's blast spent itself against the side of the warehouse, missing him.

His blaster was unwieldy in his left hand, and the top grip had no trigger for him to pull, but it was still heavy enough to use as a bludgeon. He swung it sideways toward the guard's head, tugging hard on the Galra's blaster with his other hand at the same time. The guard got his left forearm up just in time to block the blow, but it clearly hurt. The guard was thoroughly tangled up, his blaster arm pulled across his stomach and his free arm twisted across his chest to block Hunk's bayard on the other side, and Hunk needed to capitalize on it before the guard got out of the twist.

He stepped even closer to the guard, pulling the blaster toward him so that the Galra couldn't step backward without letting go. He kept pressing into the guard's left forearm with his bayard, hard enough to keep the left arm pulled tightly against the guard's chest. Panic flashed through the guard's eyes for an instant before Hunk head-butted him hard enough to make himself a little dizzy.

_Oh no_ , he thought to himself, _that was a mistake_. But it wasn't. The guard slumped to the ground in front of him, unconscious.

Hunk breathed a sigh of relief. The brief flash of dizziness faded almost as quickly as it had come, and he could start figuring out what to do about the guard now that he was out. He probably wouldn't stay unconscious for long, and there might be more of them. He had to keep moving.

 

* * *

  

Pidge felt like she was boiling inside, her face getting steadily redder as she squared up to shout at Lance.  If there was anything she hated more than being told she should stay behind, it was being told she should stay behind because she was the  _smallest._ "Forget _fighting -_ you two morons couldn't even _get_ there without me. I'm _not_ staying behind while you take _my tech_ out to the middle of nowhere!  You couldn't fix a broken comm if you had a week and a full set of instructions!"

"Well _I'm_ not staying either!" Lance yelled back, glaring. "Hunk is my _best friend_! You wouldn't even grab a _pizza_ with him before all this!"

"That is _not_ the point!"

"Guys!" Keith interrupted, grabbing them by the shoulders and turning them to look at him, "We have to get going! I'm taking Pidge with me."

 This time it was Lance squaring up for a fight, taking a step toward Keith. "Like _hell_ you are! Who died and made _you_  king?"

"Shiro _said_ I should be the leader if he couldn't," Keith answered stubbornly, leaning in instead of backing down. Pidge suddenly realized he'd been calm for the whole argument, like he didn't really doubt _he_ 'd get to go, even while she and Lance had been half out of their minds fighting about it. Another wave of anger washed over her.

"Well, that doesn't mean you get to _go_ ," she snapped at him, "Shiro's still the leader, he's just not _here_."

"And that leaves _me_ in charge!"

"It does _not_!" Lance exclaimed, "If anything, it leaves the _Princess_ in charge!"

"Well, the _Princess_ doesn't seem to be making a _choice_ , here," Keith snapped back.

"The _Princess_ thought you could reach an agreement like _paladins_ instead of yelling like a bunch of children! Maybe you should _all_ stay and I should go find them myself."

"In what?" Pidge asked her derisively, "You gonna take a pod like the one we lost them in?"

"That's not the _point_ , Pidge!" Allura answered, "You're wasting time! _All_ of you are wasting time."

" _Lance_ is the one wasting time," Keith insisted, "Pidge and I are the _obvious_ choices. She's got the comms and can keep our tech running no matter what we find, and my lion's the fastest."

"Yeah, and you'll be going the same speed as Pidge the whole time!" Lance said, " _I_ should be going! It's _Hunk_!"

"Yeah, and it's _Shiro_ ," Keith answered, setting his jaw. "So I'm _not_ staying behind. If you're gonna base it on _that_ , Pidge should stay!"

" _Excuse you?_ " she protested, "I care about them _too_ , numbskull!"

"Well _somebody_ has to stay here!"

"Well maybe somebody _shouldn't_!" Lance shouted, before Pidge could find a comeback.

For a moment they were all silent, staring at each other.

Allura broke the silence, her voice tense and icy. "I am _not_ letting you leave the Castle undefended when Coran's stuck in a healing pod. I don't _have_ to let _two_ of you go!"

"Oh, _let_ us!" Pidge answered, the words slipping out before she'd thought them through, "'Cause you're so _nice_ not to let our friends just _die_."

Allura took half a step back. "That's not fair, Pidge! I would never-"

"You're still making one of us stay," Lance said, his voice softer than it had been, even as he refused to back down.

"That's because there aren't _enough_ of us!" Allura answered, "I wish there were, but the four of us are _it!_   We can't afford to lose all of you on the chance that we can get the others back. Not with the Castle's defenses down, and not with Coran too hurt to be moved. We _can't_."

Suddenly, Keith's shoulders deflated and he sighed heavily. When Pidge turned to look at him, the fight seemed to have gone out of his eyes. "There aren't enough of us," he repeated back, voice going soft, "There aren't enough. Allura's right. It's a numbers problem."

Pidge wrinkled her forehead. "So?"

"So I'd better be the one who stays behind. If you and Lance can't bring them back, I'm our best chance at getting more help. The Blades are more likely to listen to me than they are to you guys. It's gotta be me."

 

 

Silence fell in the room. He was probably right. But Keith giving in didn't _feel_ right somehow.

As the silence stretched on, he started to look clearly uncomfortable. "Look, I don't like it, but it's the only practical choice. Shiro will understand that."

"I'm sure he will," Allura answered gently.

"So we're going, then," Lance said, "Pidge and me."

Keith nodded. "Yeah."

"Thanks."

Pidge wasn't sure thank you was what she meant, so she didn't second it. Instead, she reached out to grab Keith's hand, looking him firmly in the eye. "We'll bring them back," she told him, "Don't worry."

He smiled softly, squeezing her hand in return. "I won't."

 

* * *

 

Hunk checked his disguise, adjusting the mask over his face and hoping it was what it looked like, which was some kind of surgical mask. He was planning to cough a lot if anyone saw him, like he was sick and didn't want to spread his germs around, but if this wasn't right it, no amount of coughing would cover for it.

The guard's uniform didn't fit him perfectly, but there wasn't much else he could do about it. The arms and legs were too long and he'd had to make some vaguely sketchy-looking modifications to the armor to make up for that, but at least the guard had been pretty heavy-set and he'd been able to make it work. The helmet fit well, which was good, and the mask covered most of his face.  The armor sat heavily on his bruised hip, but didn't hurt the range of motion on his shoulder, so it was better than he could have hoped for. The thick winter gloves were already uncomfortable in the heat, but they were purple and would probably be convincingly hand-like from a distance.

Maybe no one would notice the thin line of brown skin between the helmet and the mask, or the fact that he didn't have pointy purple ears sticking out of the helmet.  Maybe no one would notice the few bits of his paladin armor he was still wearing under the Galra armor so he could be sure it would keep translating languages for him.

He felt bad about how much time he'd already spent here, but it was a treasure trove of important supplies, and he'd told himself that he needed to make sure the guard's bonds would hold anyway. They had, even after the guard woke up, and now the guard was gagged and hidden behind one set of big heavy water drums, safely neutralized. His own uniform, a box of what looked like emergency rations, and a pile of important comm and ship parts were stashed behind a second set of water drums, ready to go as soon as he got back.  Hunk had no more excuses not to go for the intel they needed.

He swallowed, hard, creeping forward to look out the warehouse door. Now that he had the uniform, he could walk straight into the main building across from him. He just had to work up the guts to do it. The compound was quiet again and he wasn't likely to get a better time, even if he waited.

He took a deep breath and pulled his shoulders back, trying to look broader and more intimidating. It was time to go.

He stepped forward into the sunshine and immediately noticed that the Galra armor didn't disperse the heat as well as his paladin armor did. He could understand why the Galra didn't seem to be walking around outside much.

He could practically hear his heartbeat in his ears. Part of him wanted to just sprint across the open expanse and into the safety of the building, but he forced himself to walk at a normal speed instead. Doing anything while thinking 'don't look suspicious' always felt weird, but if he could keep his breathing slow and even, he could keep his steps slow and even. He estimated how far he was from the door and counted down the steps, keeping careful control over his fear.

Pushing through the front door and into the building felt like more of a relief than he'd expected. It was blessedly cool inside, and the interior looked just like the insides of the other Galra military facilities they'd broken into, with the same dark walls and the same purple lighting. It was weirdly reassuring. This might be a bad place, but at least it was the bad place he'd been expecting.

It took every bit of willpower he had not to look away as he passed the first Galra in the hallway, a guard in a helmet and armor just like his. He took his cues from the alien, keeping his head up and walking by with the barest nod, holding his breath. Then he'd made it past and he could breathe again. He let the air back out in a rush, keeping his shoulders carefully straight so it wouldn't be so visible, just in case.

At the end of the hall, he turned toward the outer edge of the building, wishing he had one of Pidge's hand-held screens and could tap in at the server room instead of looking for a little-used terminal and hoping no one walked up to it. Of course, even if he had a tablet, finding the server room would have to be trial-and-error anyway, so maybe it didn't matter.

He listened carefully at the first door that looked promising and turned the handle, pushing his way in and hoping it would be empty. It was some kind of armory, one without an obvious computer terminal. With the guard's blaster in his hands and his bayard already tucked away in the little pocket space he had, the armory didn't do him any good. But at least it was empty. Any empty room was better than being caught. He sighed in relief, closing the door again instead of going in.

He looked around himself, but no one had seen. Good. He could move on.

The next door he tried turned out to be a bathroom, which struck him as mildly absurd. Here he was, psyching himself out that every door would have a bunch of vaguely murderous Galra soldiers waiting behind it, but if anyone actually _had_ been in the bathroom they would have been just as embarrassed as he was by him barging in. He smiled behind his mask as he closed the door. _That_ would have been a story to take back to Shiro, for sure.

He listened in at the next door, hoping no one came into the hallway. It seemed like too much good luck already that no one had come around the corner to find him listening at doors. But his luck held. The room sounded empty, and when he opened the door, he found what he'd been looking for.

Checking over his shoulder one more time, he stepped into the room and closed the door softly behind him. The terminal was up against the wall in the corner, directly across from the doorway. It had the usual floating Galra screens above it and a second large screen on the wall to his left.  The big screen would be clearly visible from the large table on the right-hand side of the room, and he suspected that was why it was there. It had to be some kind of meeting room, but one they didn't need right now. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. If a whole group of Galra arrived at once, there was no way he'd be able to get away from them.

He'd need to be fast, just in case.

Hacking into the system wasn't as hard as he'd been afraid it might be. He'd watched Pidge do it enough times to make up for the fact that he'd always been better with hardware than software, and the Galra systems weren't _that_ different from the Altean ones they had at the castle. He had no idea how to move things from the small screens in front of him to the big presentation screen on the side, but he didn't really need to. If he didn't stay long, it wouldn't be too bad that his back was to the door.

He pulled up their location first, hoping they were close enough to their original flight plan for him to get the others here if he could get the comms working. They still hadn't really learned the finer points of space navigation, but if he could give the others coordinates for the planet and some idea of how far off course they were, they should be able to find them. He'd need to remember as much as possible, just in case, but the coordinates were clear and that should be enough. The lions were good with coordinates.

He pulled up the data on the planet itself, hoping it would tell him why the comms weren't working. He couldn't read much Galra, but he'd learned all his numbers, and if he was interpreting what these readings were from correctly, the planet had the weirdest magnetic field he'd ever seen. The numbers were flagged in the system, clearly unusual to the Galra, too. That was it, then. That was the problem.

He flipped through a few more screens, looking for anything he could make sense of.

He was right on the edge of deciding it was enough and heading back to the warehouse, when he stumbled on a folder of blueprints and schematics. That was more like it! The labels were all in Galra, but blueprints were blueprints, more or less. He glanced over his shoulder at the door. No one was coming, and if he could just look at the schematics for whatever comms systems the Galra were using on this planet, he was sure he could build something of his own that would work for him and Shiro.

He dug into the folder excitedly. Sometimes it was obvious what a device was for, and sometimes he had to guess. It was fascinating, actually, looking through the Galra tech analytically like this. Pidge was usually so focused on finding her family that she didn't look for things like the specs to a Galra blaster. Not that he blamed her. If it were _his_ family, he'd be pretty focused on them, too.

A few of the comm devices looked like good models for fixing up his own system to make it work with the planet's wacky magnetic fields, and he could already see his new system coming together in his head. He'd need to scratch some things out in the dirt when he got back, just to make sure, but the parts were starting to fall into place. There were other designs that were equally inspiring, either particularly elegant or particularly improvable, and the internal design of the Galra blasters was surprisingly flexible. He flipped through to see what else was in here.

He didn't realize he'd lost track of time until the door opened behind him, creaking slightly on its hinges. He turned around, heart racing, and found a helmetless Galra soldier standing in the doorway and looking just as surprised. His armor was different from Hunk's, like maybe he was an officer or something. Someone important. Hunk's mouth went dry.

"What are you doing here, soldier?" the Galra barked authoritatively. Definitely an officer, then.

 

 

 

Hunk's palms were sweaty, and his brain was suddenly a total blank. He had to say something, but there was nothing there. He noticed that his breath was starting to come faster than usual, but this was not the time to hyperventilate. Good thing his mask felt a little bit like a brown paper b - wait! the mask!

Remembering his original plan for the disguise, he faked a cough, doubling over so that he wouldn't have to look at the officer as he tried to gather his thoughts and hoping it would hide his face a little better.

When he thought he couldn't reasonably pretend to cough any longer, he straightened up, not quite meeting the officer's eye. "I'm not feeling well," he said, lowering the pitch of his voice as far as he could, "I was just taking a break."

"And what are you _supposed_ to be doing?" the officer asked coldly.

Hunk had no pre-prepared answer for that, but he could think better now that he'd gotten past the initial shock. What was he supposed to be doing? What was he supposed to be - "Extra security duty," he answered gruffly, "After that weird crash yesterday."

"And they dragged you out of the infirmary for that?"

Hunk felt a flutter of hope. The officer sounded vaguely disapproving, and if he didn't think the crash was a big deal, then - "Yeah," Hunk answered, "Guess somebody's worried. Even the doctor thought it was dumb." He really hoped the Galra had doctors instead of medics. He really hoped the outpost had a doctor. But surely it had to, right? Surely, even the Galra didn't send people to live on out-of-the-way planets without a doctor.

The Galra didn't immediately seem suspicious. His eyes were still on Hunk, making him want to squirm, but he didn't seem suspicious.

"Move along then," the officer said, "We've got a meeting in here. And try not to let me catch you falling down on the job again."

Hunk wasn't sure he'd ever felt so relieved in his life. "Yes, sir!" he answered, snapping to attention and saluting before walking out the door as fast as he could without running.

The Galra was muttering behind him as he stepped out into the hall. "These young soldiers these days. No discipline. They all ought to be -" The computer beeped, and Hunk's heart sank. "And what was he - Wait a minute!"

Hunk started running. There was no way he'd be able to talk himself out of trouble twice.

"You! Stop!" The officer was coming out of the room behind him, and Hunk wondered exactly what those last schematics were for, to get a reaction this strong.

"Come back here!" Hunk could hear the officer's feet picking up speed, and someone was bound to hear him shouting. Hunk turned as he ran, shooting behind him with the blaster he'd lifted off the guard at the warehouse and missing the Galra by a mile.

He rounded the corner, craning his neck as he tried to keep shooting at the officer following him. He heard a startled shout and whipped his head around to find two guards at the far end of the hallway, directly in front of him and raising their blasters. They were too far away to be really accurate, but he couldn't stop running, not with the officer still behind him.

The guards started shooting, missing him, but not by as much as he'd been missing. He couldn't keep running, either.

Acting on instinct, he dropped his Galra blaster and reached for his bayard. The weight of it, pulling against his hands as it expanded into its full size, was a relief, sore shoulder or not. He instantly felt calmer and more sure of himself. He had a lot of bad options, but at least something felt right.

Skidding to a stop, he braced himself so the cannon's kickback wouldn't hurt his shoulder too badly and picked a target.


	5. Calm and Chaos

Pidge felt like her heart was going to leap clear out of her chest as she screeched to a halt at the last coordinates they had for Shiro and Hunk. She and Lance had been pushing their lions as fast as they could go, and the sudden stop was almost as shocking as the absence of their friends was disappointing.

There was nothing here. Nothing at all. They were fairly close to a star with some planets, but nothing was showing up on her maps as inhabited, and there were no obvious signs of Hunk and Shiro. Her chest felt hollow and empty as she looked around at _nothing_.

Lance and Blue rocketed past her, but then Lance realized she'd stopped and Blue came to a halt too, twisting around to look at her and Green.

"Pidge?" Lance asked. His voice was crackling through the regular comms, even with her this close, and his picture was wavy. It was time, then. Time to turn on the high-powered comm device she'd brought with her. Time to hope Shiro and Hunk were calling for them.

"This is the spot," she told Lance. "The last place we've got communications from them. I'm gonna turn the fancy comm on." She'd told him the details of it, but Lance never followed things like that and calling it the 'fancy comm' was just easier. She missed Hunk. She missed Shiro, too. She needed them to be here.

When she turned sideways and flipped the switch on the large device she'd jammed between the steering console and the wall, she could suddenly hear the Castle. She hadn't realized Allura and Keith had dropped out, but they had clearly realized they couldn't hear Pidge and Lance. She wasn't sure how long ago they'd lost the Castle, but Allura and Keith were still yelling at them to come in, so it couldn't have been long.

When Lance asked "Anything?" his voice came through the fancy comm's speakers perfectly clear, crackling only through the video screen and Green's normal speakers.

If Shiro and Hunk were in range, they weren't on their comms anymore. They weren't calling for them. They weren't calling for each other. There was nothing.

"No," she answered, heart sinking. Her voice sounded hollow and disappointed, even in her own ears.

"That's what I was afraid of," he answered, equally disappointed. "Any idea what went wrong or why you sound all crackly?"

"No. I'll use the transmitter on this, though, so you can hear better." She switched the lion's comm system off entirely, feeling suddenly more alone without even a wavy image of Lance beside her, and opened a channel on the other comm. She set it to contact everyone, in the hopes that Shiro and Hunk would answer too. "Hello? Is this coming through clearly?" she asked.

"Yeah," Lance answered, "Can it reach the Castle?"

Keith and Allura weren't answering, so probably not. "I don't know," she told him, "I'll make some adjustments, but I've gotta be careful. I'm not sure it's as secure as the lions. We don't want to be overheard."

"Do you think that's what happened to Shiro and Hunk? They were overheard?"

"Probably not," she answered, turning the dials, "I think we'd know about it if it was that. They'd have called us to let us know they had our people. Or they'd have come after us. Allura? Keith?" She didn't hear any change in the communications from the Castle, and listening to Allura and Keith calling desperately for them to answer was getting harder by the minute.

"I'm guessing you still can't hear them?"

" _I_ can, but they can't hear _me_. I guess the transmitter's not as much stronger as I'd hoped."

"Well, we can't go back just because they can't hear us. I say we check those planets over there. They're the closest ones."

Pidge bit her lip.

Logically, there was no reason to think that Shiro and Hunk were there just because it was close. They could have kept going for light-years from here. They could be perfectly fine and headed back here. They could have crashed anywhere along their original flight path. They could be dead.

Emotionally, she sure as heck wasn't going back to the Castle without running down those possibilities first, as many of them as she could. She'd lost her family once. She wasn't about to do it again. And this time, there was no Voltron obligation to get in her way. This _was_ a Voltron obligation.

Allura and Keith had stopped yelling for them to answer, and that was actually, unexpectedly, worse than listening to them scream her name.

"We should never have let them go," Allura said, still coming through clearly, "We should have waited for Coran. I'm sure he knows that area. He _must_ know it. There must be something missing from the map."

"I should have gone _with_ them. I should never have let you convince me to stay!" Keith didn't even sound angry. He sounded like he was about to break apart. She'd never wished so hard that Keith would just get mad.

"And have _no_ paladins at _all_ right now? You can't _really_ mean that."

"We have to at least send the others a message," Pidge said finally. "I agree that we can't leave. We _won't_ leave. But they need to know we're ok and we're looking and we'll call them when we can."

"Ok, yeah. Are they worried about us? I bet they're worried about us. I'd be worried if I didn't know where you were. I can check the first planet while you're doing that."

Pidge wrinkled her forehead, "I don't think we should split up in potentially hostile territory. Out here, maybe, but not planet-side. Why don't you call them and I'll keep transmitting. Maybe Hunk and Shiro can hear us, and they just don't realize it isn't space chatter. Shiro! Hunk! Are you out there?"

Lance paused, like he was waiting for an answer, too. They didn't get one.

"Shiro!" she called again.

"I'll go," Lance told her, "But I'm not going back far enough for it to be clear instead of crackly, and I'm not gonna stay to talk. We can't just _leave_ them. Not when we're this close."

Pidge didn't mention that they didn't know how close 'this close' was. She faked a smile, even though Lance couldn't see her with her regular comm system off. "Thanks. I'll keep calling Shiro and Hunk. Maybe they're - maybe they're eating lunch. They'd take their helmets off for that."

"Yeah. Yeah, and Shiro always eats fast. Maybe you'll have their coordinates by the time I get back! They're definitely way closer than the Castle. They've gotta be."

She doubted she'd hear them that quickly, if she heard them at all without moving closer to them, and there was an edge to the pep in Lance's voice that told her he doubted it, too. He just didn't want her to worry.

It was too late for that.

 

* * *

 

Hunk's first shot took out one of the guards, and the other looked momentarily surprised before shooting back again, his shots getting closer as he sprinted forward into a range that was better for the Galra blasters. Hunk stopped him with another shot, whirling around to check behind him as soon as he was sure the guard in front of him was down.

The officer had apparently gone to the armory instead of chasing him, because he had a blaster of his own now. He had backup, too. Four of them. Three blasters shot at once as soon as he spotted them, and he realized they'd been trying to sneak up on him. He ducked two of the blasts, but the third hit him, bouncing off his armor, and he took off at a run. He couldn't take on five of them. He had to get out of their range.

More shots whizzed past him, and he gave up on trying to baby his shoulder, shooting indiscriminately behind him as he ran even though it forced him to twist uncomfortably. One of the Galra sentries he'd already hit reached up to grab at him as he passed, but he shot the alien again at point blank range, his stomach twisting as he stepped over the body.

Another shot hit him in the back and he could feel the air being driven out of him, making his next gasping breath a painful one. He wasn't sure how long this armor would hold. He wanted his own armor. He wanted not to be here. He had to get away.

It was hard to think while he was running, and trying to shoot behind him hurt more with his bayard than with - that was it. He rounded the corner, working it out in the few extra moments it took for the Galra to catch up and get a shot on him again.

If he could get a minute, just a _minute_ alone with another Galra blaster, he could stop them from chasing him. He needed another armory. He needed - another guard came out of a room in front of him and Hunk shot him without thinking about it. The guard had a blaster, and Hunk almost laughed. If Lance were here, he'd be laughing. If Lance were here, he'd be hitting the Galra, even shooting on the run. Hunk wasn't hitting anyone behind him, he didn't think, or he at least wasn't hitting them often, but he was about to not have to. Maybe.

He shot the Galra again as he got close, just to be sure, and wrenched the blaster out of his hands as he ran past. He couldn't steady his bayard with a hand on the blaster, and he couldn't work on the blaster with his bayard weighing him down. He collapsed it, jamming it back into his hip pouch.

He just needed to get a little bit of separation. Just a _little_. He also needed to know where to block off the hallway.

If Keith were here, he'd probably already know exactly where to make his stand. He had a good tactical mind like that. But Hunk didn't want to fight the whole compound, even if he thought he could. And he didn't.

If Shiro were here, he'd find a way to get away. He'd duck into a room because he'd know what the rooms were. Or he'd tuck himself around a corner. Or climb into the air ducts. No, that would be Pidge.

Hunk wasn't any of the other paladins, and he couldn't think of a good way to carve out a minute for himself in the middle of a chase, so he guessed it was time to find out how well he could engineer literally on the run. He'd just been looking at the schematics for these blasters. He knew he could modify the innards to do what he needed them to do. He just didn't know how long he could run without dropping anything important. And he didn't know what he'd shoot with once he'd started dismantling it.

He also didn't know what else to do. He was getting close to the exit to the building, but that wasn't going to get him away. Not if he couldn't stop the group of Galra behind him.

He ripped open the Galra blaster, dropping a large piece of the casing behind him so he didn't have to keep ahold of it and pulled wires out roughly, hoping he wasn't damaging anything too much. It was hard to see what he was doing while keeping an eye on where he was going. It was hard to see what he was doing with everything moving up and down as he ran. It was hard to do anything with one hand. But there weren't many modifications he needed to make. It was just a little rewiring. Just a little.

Energy beams whistled past his head and he ripped his glove off with his teeth so he could work by touch. He picked up speed, running faster once he didn't have to look down.

He could see the inside of the blaster in his mind's eye. He could feel the wires, counting off the connections. He could tweak things, taking advantage of all the flexibility he'd noticed in the design. An energy beam hit him in his left shoulder, but the armor held, and that was the good shoulder and the less important hand, and it didn't jar him enough to make him drop the blaster. He kept working. He was lucky the Galra weren't very good shots, either.

He glanced down at the blaster to double-check it before he looked for a place to cut them off. It looked right. He thought it was right. It was the way it had looked in his head, and he needed it to be right.

He was headed for a y-shaped intersection of hallways. He remembered the crossing from coming in. It was near the front of the building. That was good. There were Galra coming from the other direction. That was bad.

He didn't have time to find a better location. This would have to do.

He pulled hard on the blaster's trigger, holding it down until the energy was cycling the way he wanted it to. He needed to beat the Galra to the intersection. Both groups of them. And he needed not to get killed on the way there, because there was no way this armor was going to keep holding out indefinitely.

He grabbed his bayard, hating the way every shot with it slowed him down, and expanded it anyway. He shot the Galra at the front of the new group, blasting him clear off his feet. The rest slowed down, looking more cautious. Hunk shot randomly, mostly missing, and kept running. The Galra blaster was starting to overload. It wouldn't be long. He had to get far enough to drop it at the intersection and then far enough away not to get caught when the overload got to be too much for it.

At the intersection, he dropped the blaster. It wasn't a blaster anymore. It was a bomb, and he thought he probably had another minute before it went off. They'd be on him, by then. It would be too late. He'd failed.

The explosion came slightly before he expected it and he felt shrapnel hit his back, knocking him forward off his feet. He caught himself on his hands and knees and scrambled back up to his feet, looking back over his shoulder. He was pretty sure he'd just blown up a living, breathing alien being, and maybe more than one, and he was _absolutely_ sure that even if that was true he couldn't think about it. He was lucky he hadn't been caught worse by the explosion. He was also lucky his ears were inside the helmet and at least a little bit protected from the blast. They were ringing, but he could still hear.

The bomb hadn't been a big one, but the hallway was pretty wrecked, with chunks of ceiling caving in where the bomb had been. That would slow them down, even if it didn't stop them. He kept running.

Galra streamed out of the barracks at the sound of the explosion, but they didn't seem ready for a fight. Lucky. He was lucky. They hadn't heard about the intruder in the main building. They'd just heard the explosion, which was better than he could say for himself with his ears ringing like this.

One of them gestured toward him and he didn't wait to figure out what the guard might be saying. He shot indiscriminately toward the barracks to cover himself, and he could _see_ them figuring it out. Most of them weren't armed yet, and while they were getting their guns, he could make it back to the warehouse. He _really_ hoped he could make it back to the warehouse. He felt a little off-center, but if he could keep his feet under him, he could worry about that in the warehouse.

The soldiers adjusted quickly, half of them running back to the barracks for blasters, and half of them zigzagging their way toward him so that he kept missing shots. He glanced back toward the main building. He'd bottled it up enough. No one was immediately behind him.

He stopped short, giving himself a moment to shoot while he could dig his feet in.

His heavy spray of energy beams took out enough of the Galra for the others to retreat, but the soldiers who had run back in for blasters were outside now, and he had to keep running. He took off again, pushing himself as fast as he could go.

The soldiers figured out where he was going and ran toward the warehouse too, and he switched his focus from shooting warning shots to taking out anyone who might beat him to the door.

A lucky shot from one of the Galra hit the nose of his bayard and he shot into the warehouse by accident, hitting a water barrel and splitting it open, but he'd take it when it meant the alien hadn't hit him.

He ran through the warehouse door at full speed, glad it stood open. It had been open when he got here, but he'd checked the closing and locking mechanisms while he was hiding here before. He shot the door's controls and it slammed shut, but there were already two Galra fighters inside with him. He shot at them, too, but they were fast and kept ducking and dodging.

The guard he'd already fought was shouting through his gag, and Hunk got a good shot on one of the new guards when the soldier stopped to look at his friend. He could hear blaster shots spending themselves against the door, even through the ringing in his ears, but he'd gotten a pretty good look at the metal and he didn't think regular blasters were going to do any real damage for a while. He just had to worry about this other guard. And getting out.

Hunk ducked three rapid shots and then got in one of his own, noticing which way the guard moved to get out of the way. The guard shot again, but Hunk got behind a water barrel in time. The barrel split, but the blast diffused. Hunk shot again, two tight shots together, one at the guard and one at the spot where he thought the guard might end up when he ducked.

The Galra crumpled completely, and Hunk looked past him, making sure he was alone. The guards outside were still shooting into the warehouse door, making a steady thumping sound, and Hunk realized that his hands had started shaking, so hard his bayard's nose jumped up and down. He glared at them, trying to take a deep breath. This was _really bad timing_ for that to be happening to him, and he was going to need it to stop.

He had to get out of here, which meant he needed some serious cover. He wasn't sure how damaged the back of his armor was, but the front had a few scorch marks from the Galra blasters and he was pretty sure he was gonna feel awful once the adrenaline from the fight wore off. He could already tell he'd be bruised.

He thought about changing back into his own armor, but he didn't have time, especially not with his hands shaking so hard. He had to get out. He looked over the warehouse, scanning it for potential exits and running through his options, and it immediately became obvious that he'd need to steal a speeder. That would be convenient from a carrying-things standpoint, which was a nice upside, but he wouldn't be able to hide it once he got back to the cave, which was not so great.

Then again, if he could make it back, maybe Shiro would have a solution for that. And if he could get the comms fixed, maybe he could reach the others. And if he could reach the others before the Galra caught him and Shiro, maybe they could get here in time to rescue them before they got killed. Three lions might be enough to break into an outpost this small. But even Red couldn't get here in time if the Galra were already chasing him.

Something bigger hit the front doors of the warehouse, and more blaster shots started pounding against the back doors, which he realized he hadn't actually confirmed were locked, and he made up his mind. It was this or nothing. He'd worry about the rest later.

 

* * *

 

Pidge was so used to the lions' video screens that it was weird being able to hear the others talk without seeing them. It was also weird hearing them all and only being able to answer Lance, and it was probably weird for Lance to be watching Allura and Keith but hearing her call for Shiro and Hunk in the background.

Every time she called their names and they didn't answer, she felt another stab of something in her heart. She would have thought that by now missing people would feel old hat, but it didn't. It hurt. She hated it.

"But if you start from their destination, you'll be faster. If they're fine or they've landed somewhere obvious -"

"Keith, if they were fine, they'd have found a way to call us," Lance insisted. "I _know_ it. We have to look for them."

"We're with you on that, Lance," Allura answered, "But you can't just search at random. You need to fly the rest of their flight pattern and look in the most likely places first."

"That's what I'm trying to _tell_ you! This _is_ the most likely place!"

"Because you're already there?" Keith sounded surprisingly calm, when usually a comment like that would be biting when he aimed it at Lance. That, more than anything else, told Pidge how worried he'd been when they lost contact. She felt her chest tighten a little and called Shiro and Hunk again. There was still no answer.

She knew she should wade into the argument, at least as much as she could when Lance was the only one who could hear her, but she couldn't stop trying to listen for Hunk and Shiro. She _couldn't_.

"No!" Lance insisted, "Because Hunk would have called us. If he'd realized they were losing comms, he'd have turned around and called us. They _have_ to have crashed before they could do that."

"Ok, maybe, but Shiro would have wanted to keep going," Keith countered, "He wouldn't have wanted to waste time. Not when he'd left us all vulnerable."

"Hunk would have stood up to him!"

"Up to _Shiro_?"

"Yeah, Keith, up to Shiro. He _does_ that, in case you've forgotten."

"That's all good and well" Allura interjected calmly, "But your theory also requires Hunk to have noticed they'd lost their connection to us. We weren't talking at the time, and if the Castle's systems hadn't alerted us that they were dropping out, even we might not have realized we'd lost them."

"They've _got_ to be here, Allura. They've _got_ to."

"They have to be _somewhere_ ," Allura answered, "But we need to make sure you're using the safest method to-"

"No!" Lance snapped, "We don't! We just have to make sure we're _getting_ to them! Hunk's my _best friend_ , and Shiro's _Shiro_ , and I can't just _sit_ here listening to Pidge call them and not get an _answer_!"

"And we can't let you go knowing you're about to do something _stupid_!" Keith shouted back, and there it was. The anger. Pidge closed her eyes.

"Oh, yeah, something _stupid_. 'Cause that's definitely exactly what we're gonna do, right Keith? We're just idiots, who are gonna _run off_ like . . . like _idiots_. Only _you_ get to act like -"

He was about to insult Keith. It was going to be another fight, and she should tell him to stop it before it started, but what came out was "Shiro!" because if he could hear them, he'd be trying to shut it down already. "Hunk!"

Her voice was shriller than usual and she forced herself to take a deep breath before it became too obvious that she was right on the edge of panicking. There was no obvious right answer. Everyone was right and everyone was wrong, and _Shiro wasn't answering_.

Lance cut himself off with a grunt, halfway under his breath. "You know what, Keith?" he said, "You don't get a vote. 'Cause if you were here, you'd be doing the same thing. You'd be 100 light-years farther down by now, or you'd be searching those planets, but you wouldn't just be _sitting_ here. We'll call you when we find them."

Pidge felt a little bit guilty about letting Lance end the conversation that way, but it wasn't like the others could hear her, and he was _right_. Keith would already be looking by now. _They_ needed to be looking by now. _She_ needed to be looking.

 

* * *

 

The door was buckling in and a few more blows from whatever it was they had out there were going to break it down, but that was fine. Hunk really, really hoped that that was fine. He checked the pile of supplies in the back of the running speeder, making sure he had everything. A water drum and the rations, in case by some miracle Shiro could figure out a way to hide the speeder before the Galra caught up. Comm parts, either way. Extra parts for the Castle, because he couldn't leave them behind now, not after he'd spent so long in here earlier sorting through them. His uniform, helmet sitting on top so he'd be able to grab it.

It was all there, and the other speeders were disabled. He hopped down to set the charges on the two new bombs he'd made from the guards' blasters, hoping they would would be enough to open a hole in the side of the wall for his speeder to get through. If not, he'd just have to crash into whatever dent or too-small hole they made and hope for the best.

He pulled the triggers just long enough to get the overload started and sprinted back to the speeder, getting in as fast as he could so the front of it could shield him from the blast, and buckling his seatbelt in case he had to crash through.

The explosion was almost blinding, but once his eyes adjusted, he could see the desert through the wall. He hit the speeder's throttle as hard as he could and it jolted forward, scraping through a hole slightly too small for it and ripping chunks out of the wall, but coming out the other end still working.

The Galra's shouts of surprise were almost funny as he blasted past them at full speed, but it was hard to laugh at them when he knew they'd be chasing him as soon as they could get a vehicle operational. If they had other ships he didn't know about, he was already in trouble. Why couldn't it be _Lance_ blasting out of a Galra warehouse? Lance would love that kind of thing. Lance would be whooping it up right now, instead of worrying. Lance would be having a great time.

The best Hunk could do was floor it and try to keep breathing at a normal speed instead of letting his fears carry him away. The Galra had been shooting at him, but he made it out of range quickly, focusing all his attention on the mesa itself, following its curve and trying not to make himself sick.

It helped to be the one driving. It helped to know where he was going. It helped that he hadn't eaten much this morning and it had been a few more hours since then. It helped to focus on his breathing and the mesa and the horizon. He'd done it. He was away from the Galra. He felt a smile spread across his face in spite of his worries. He'd gotten away!

As soon as he was far enough around the mesa to have a chance at contacting Shiro, he ripped off the Galra helmet and pulled off his mask. He wiggled his nose and puffed his cheeks out as he reached for his own helmet, getting rid of the lingering feeling of the mask. Then he pulled the helmet on, hoping Shiro was awake to hear him coming.

"Hey," he said, "Can you hear me? I'm on my way back!"

"Hunk? Yeah. I can hear you. How long were you gone? Is everything ok? I think I fell asleep." Shiro's voice was quiet through the comms, and Hunk realized he might have been shouting at Shiro because of the ringing in his ears.

"I was longer than I meant to be," he answered, trying not to yell, "And I'm ok, but I kind of had to steal a speeder. They definitely know we're here."

"Oh," Shiro said, "That's not good."

"No."

"Are they following you?"

"Right now? Probably not. Hopefully not. I sabotaged their other speeders, so it should be a couple of hours before they can follow. Hopefully a couple of hours. I'm good at sabotage, but they had a lot of extra parts around. I'm trying to hover high enough not to leave a ton of tracks, but they're definitely gonna come eventually." His palms were getting sweaty thinking about it, but Shiro needed to know the truth if he was going to be any help at all.

"Did you get the - things?   I mean the things for the comms. Not the other stuff."

It was good to know Shiro remembered at least some of what he'd left for. Maybe that meant he could come up with a solution to their speeder problem.

"Yeah, I got 'em. I got a bunch of stuff. If we can keep them from finding us, we've got food and water for another couple days, but I don't know how to do that."

"But you can fix the comms?"

"Yeah."

"Then we'll do that." Shiro sounded confident again, but that wasn't the answer Hunk had been hoping for. Shiro might be doing better, but Hunk was pretty sure if he was at his full strength they'd have a better plan than this.

As he drove the rest of the way, he let his mind run over the comm system he was planning to build when he got back. He was pretty sure it would be strong enough to get a signal out of the atmosphere, but he wasn't sure exactly how far. He could feel all the consequences of not getting the signal far enough hovering around the edges of his mind, but he shoved them away, focusing on the device itself.

He imagined exactly how it would fit together, all the parts working at once. He imagined himself building it, feeling little electronics parts against his fingertips, so different than when he was working on spaceships. Sometimes he still couldn't believe he spent some of his time working on spaceships. Maybe he'd snack on some of the rations he was bringing back while he worked. He'd have to be careful not to get crumbs in the comms, though.

Deep inside, he knew he wouldn't snack. He knew he wouldn't have time, and he was still too afraid to really be hungry. But it helped to imagine he might. And if he imagined hard enough, it helped him stay calm. Hunk tried to picture himself doing nice leisurely work in the shade at the edge of where the sun came into the cave. He tried not to let himself worry.

Shiro walked out of the cave when he heard the speeder coming, which Hunk couldn't help being a little nervous about. Shiro looked more stable on his feet, but it would have been safer to stay hidden until Hunk identified himself. He parked the speeder, climbing out, and watched Shiro's eyes widen at the sight of him in the Galra armor.

He hadn't been sure how recovered Shiro was before, but as Shiro crouched into a fighting stance, glowing hand coming up at the ready almost faster than Hunk could process it, he realized Shiro didn't need all of his faculties to be dangerous. It was a frightening thought, but so was getting attacked by his own leader.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!" he said, pulling his helmet off to reveal his face. Hopefully that would be enough. Hopefully - yes. Shiro relaxed, shuddering visibly as his hand went back to normal.

"Sorry, Hunk," he said, "I thought - I think I still have a concussion. You're not a Galra. That's not even a Galra helmet."

"No, but if it helps, it took them a surprisingly long time to figure that out I wasn't Galra when I was in the other helmet. I mean, not long enough, but a long time."

Hunk couldn't afford to stand still. He needed to be working. He turned to get what he needed out of the back of the speeder, but before he finished piling it all onto the ground next to him, Shiro had walked over.

As soon as Hunk hopped down out of the speeder's cockpit, Shiro pulled him into a hug. "Sorry I fell asleep, Hunk. I really was worried when you cut out. I just couldn't keep my eyes open. I'm glad you're safe."

Hunk hadn't realized quite how much he hurt all over until Shiro squeezed the damaged armor and put pressure on his new bruises, but he hugged the man back anyway, allowing himself a moment to breathe and try to stay calm. "I'm glad you're safe too," he answered.

Shiro was safe, and he was doing better, but he still wasn't well. Hunk still needed to be in charge. He still needed to keep Shiro safe. He set his jaw, pulling out of the hug.

"And it's ok," he added as he let go, "You couldn't hear me anyway. But now you can, so at least we can stay safe together."

"I've been thinking about that. We can barricade the cave if we have to. It's not _very_ narrow, and most of those plants are pretty useless, but if we can use the speeder itself -" he squinted thoughtfully at the speeder, putting a hand to his head like it hurt, "Hmm, but maybe it's the wrong size. How -" he waved a hand like he was searching for a word, "How steery is it? Can you - is it steery?"

Hunk thought he knew what Shiro meant. "Probably, but I'm not sure we could stop them that way anyway. We could maybe slow them down, but I don't think it'll fit well enough to keep them out. We can try it if we have time once I get the comms working."

"Ok," Shiro said, "I'll keep a lookout, then."

Yesterday, Hunk would have told him no. This morning, he would have said no. But Shiro _did_ seem to be doing a little better now. Maybe better enough. Hunk bit his lip, watching Shiro tip his head back to look at the speeder again, studying it like he was still working on the barricade idea.

Shiro was stubborn. If he was feeling better, fighting him might just waste time.

"Ok," he agreed. "But you should watch from inside the cave, 'cause that way it'll take them some time to find us even after they see the speeder, and you'd better take my bayard."

Shiro raised an eyebrow. "You sure?"

Hunk nodded. The others were weirdly protective of their bayards, but he didn't mind the idea of letting Shiro use his. He pulled his bayard out and expanded it into its usual cannon before handing it over to Shiro. Shiro looked momentarily surprised by the weight of it, but Hunk was mostly just glad it hadn't changed shape or folded back up. He hoped it would work for Shiro. He hoped it counted for something that he wanted it to.

Shiro wasn't much help in bringing in the stuff from the speeder, but it helped to feel covered as he hauled it all into the cave.

As Hunk worked, Shiro rambled, fixated on the idea of using the speeder as a barricade and explaining that he probably could fight, and he was a little too dizzy to be great in close quarters, and he could definitely throw rocks. It was equal parts disconcerting and comforting. It was like having Lance around, which wouldn't be bad. And at least Shiro's rambling made sense. Not like his questions yesterday.

He put together the new comm as quickly as he could, focusing all of his attention on the task at hand and hoping it would be enough.


	6. Connection

Pidge flew close to the planet, circling around the equator while Lance made a perpendicular loop around its poles. She didn't like the parts of their orbits when they couldn't see each other, but at least they had a system, now, and it seemed to be working. There were definitely no obvious signs of a crash or of any inhabitants to ask about a crash, just like the last 3 planets around this sun.

"Anything?" she asked Lance.

"No," Lance answered, "Try the next one?"

"Yeah," she agreed, the hollow feeling of disappointment she'd felt with each silent planet fading to a dull numbness. "I'll take longitude this time, so Blue gets a break."

Green made a soft displeased noise in her head, and Pidge snapped the comm off for just a second to whisper, "Sorry girl. I hate it, too. But we have to find them. _We_ need them to form Voltron and _I_ \- well, we just have to find them." She couldn't bring herself to explain why she couldn't lose another family, but Green seemed to have understood anyway. She closed her eyes to take in Green's brief, comforting hum, then snapped the comm back on once Green had quieted again, adding one last "Hunk? Shiro?" before she got out of range of the planet just in case. They still didn't answer.

Something was off about this whole system. The sun pulled strangely at the lions, so that both of them had to pull up harder to come into alignment with each other again as they met back up, and something about being close to the planets made her head feel fuzzy. She thought that was probably something to do with her connection to Green. Neither of the lions were happy about being so close to these particular planets, especially when they had to go up and down the poles, but they were hanging in there anyway.

"Only a few more left around this star," she commented, "And then we can try somewhere else." She wasn't sure whether she was reassuring Lance or the lions, and she wasn't sure whether it was reassuring to be almost out of this system or fatalistic to admit that their friends might not even be here.

Lance sighed heavily as Blue flew alongside her. "Do you ever think about our families at home? Do you think it's like this for them? Worrying about us?"

"I think about them all the time. My mom's the only one who's left. Well, and our dog, Bae Bae. But I don't have to _think_ it's like this for them. I _know_ it is." Green hummed at her again, recognizing she was right up against the edge of the stuff she didn't want to talk about, and Pidge reached down to pat the side of her seat affectionately.

 

* * *

 

Hunk slid the last part in place, surveying the device he'd built. He'd had to undo all the work he'd done before and cannibalize their helmet systems entirely, but it should work. He took a moment to look it back over, sighing to release some of the tension he'd been holding in. He really hoped it worked.

He almost called Shiro, but he didn't want to make him move when he couldn't know for sure the comm device would work. It wouldn't be good for Shiro's head and it wouldn't be good not to have a lookout if they were running out of time. He tried not to think about the fact that they might be running out of time.

He switched the device on with a click, holding his breath.

For a moment there was static and then a voice said thoughtfully, "Yeah, but how would we even _get_ a letter to our families? I mean, I get that it's less high-tech than trying to send them an email but that actually kind of makes it harder instead of easier, doesn't it?"

There was a silence on the other end.

"Was that-?" Shiro asked.

There was a burst of more intense static as Pidge snorted. "If we're gonna dress up like aliens and sneak onto the planet, we might as well just go _visit_ them."

"Pidge?" Hunk asked incredulously, "Pidge, is that you?" 

Pidge's heart skipped a beat when Hunk's voice crackled under Lance's. "Hunk?" she gasped, almost forgetting to breathe, but Lance didn't hear, "- I mean, maybe _you_ could keep your mom from posting on social media, but if _my_ family saw me again, they-"

If Lance hadn't heard her, Hunk probably hadn't either. Hunk _had_ to hear her! "Shut up, Lance!" she ordered, "Hunk! Hunk, are you there?"

Lance stopped talking, whooping in her ear instead as he realized she'd found the others.

She'd usually be annoyed with him for drowning the others out, but this time the cheers were too much what she felt herself for her to resent them.

"Yeah, Pidge, I'm here! We're both here! Is Lance there? Why can't we hear Lance?"

Pidge laughed, unable to hold in her relief. It was really Hunk! He was really there! They'd really found him!

 

 

 

"Lance?" a voice asked faintly in the background.

"Shiro!" Pidge shouted, smiling as big as she ever had. Her heart was so full of _everything_ that she wanted to cheer like Lance, but she had to bring it back down to earth. She had to. Hunk had started off excited, but his voice had already taken a turn toward worried, and she still didn't know where he was. She took a deep breath, grinning even as she calmed down. Of course Hunk was worried. Hunk was _always_ worried. It was like all of a sudden, things were normal again, and _Hunk was worried in her ear!_

"Hunk, you have no idea how much we missed you guys," Pidge said, "Are you ok?"

Hunk looked over his shoulder at Shiro and the cave entrance. He bit his lip, "Yeah, we are for now, mostly. But we won't be for long. Shiro has a concussion and-"

Pidge made a sharp, surprised sound over the comm and interrupted him, her voice suddenly sounding apprehensive like it hadn't before, "Wait, Lance, wait, shut up, I'm trying to listen. What do you _mean_ he has a concussion?" Hunk still wasn't sure why they couldn't hear Lance, but it was enough to know his best friend was there. Both of his best friends. Two of his maybe-more-than-two-now best friends. He felt something tight in his chest relaxing, like he was letting go of tension he didn't even know he'd been carrying.

"I mean he hit his head, Pidge," he explained, "And he was out for a while, but he's starting to get better, I think. We've just gotta get him back to the Castle. Are you -"

Pidge interrupted again, "He hit his head, Lance, but he's fine - We'll get him home, Hunk, don't worry."

"Where are you?" Hunk asked, "You're not at the Castle, are you? 'Cause then we'd be able to hear everybody, right?"

"We're circling this weird star," she answered, "We've been looking for you guys for hours - I don't _know_ how they look, Lance, I can't see them - but if we can hear you around all the interference out here, we must not be too far. Are _you_ ok, Hunk?"

"I'm fine," Hunk answered, almost laughing at the absurdity of his friends fussing over him when Shiro had a _concussion_. Boy, were they ever going to be surprised by the last couple of days. "Gosh, it's good to hear your voice, Pidge. I wish we could hear Lance. Are the others with you, too? You've gotta come get us. I don't know how long we have before the Galra catch up to us."

Pidge's heart leapt up into her throat at the word "Galra." Their maps hadn't shown any Galra in the area, and here she was rambling about where they were when Hunk and Shiro were in trouble! She needed to ask them where they were, but she suddenly felt like she couldn't breathe. What if they hadn't found them in time?

"Hunk got shot at," Shiro informed her over the comms. "He stole a speeder. We're gonna make a barricade." He sounded a little bit dazed, and it was hard to believe she'd been laughing a minute ago.

"What is he talking about?" she demanded, her chest tight with worry, "Are you in danger?"

"Ok, it's not really a  _barricade_ , but we're holed up in this cave and we can slow them down, but we can't keep them out, and we haven't even started the barricade because I've been working on the comms and -"

She was about to cut Hunk's rambling off when Lance interrupted instead. " _Danger_? Who's in danger?"

"Who do you _think_ , Lance," she snapped, "Where are you? Which planet? Where's the cave? How long's it gonna take you to make the barricade? How far away are the Galra?"

"They're building a-?"

"Lance!"

"I don't know. I disabled the rest of the speeders when I stole mine, but it's been a while. I don't know how long we have. But I can give you the planet's coordinates" Hunk read off a string of numbers and she repeated them to Lance as she typed them into Green's navigation system.

"Yeah, that's right," Hunk confirmed, "And I don't really know how to tell you where on the planet. We're in a cave on the side of this big mesa thing, and there's a Galra outpost on the other side of the mesa. It's only a couple of miles across the top, but they came around the side before and so they probably will again. I don't think the speeders go that high, really."

Pidge bit her lip, trying not to curse and worry Lance. She pushed her lion to go faster, watching through the window as Blue picked up speed to match them. "The outpost was labeled, but I'm not sure where we are from there," he continued, reading off more coordinates she couldn't write down while they were flying this fast.

Hunk wracked his brain for a way to get them there faster, just in case. The lions were great with coordinates in space, but getting around once they were on a planet was always harder. They'd be flying in, and they'd need the right part of the planet, and then they'd come in from the air and - the air! What would they see from the air?

He thought back to the cluster of buildings next to the mesa and what it had been like looking down on them, but they weren't that big and the others would have to really search for that, probably. There had to be something more obvious. Didn't there? Suddenly, an idea hit him, "Shiro! Can you grab firewood? Or are you gonna get dizzy?"

"Firewood?" Pidge asked, "Hunk, what are you -"

"Just a second, Pidge," he told her, focusing on Shiro. He'd slumped heavily against the wall behind him halfway through Hunk's conversation with Pidge, like realizing they were about to be rescued had taken something out of him.

"Yeah. Yeah. I'm on it."

"What are you gonna do?" Pidge asked again.

"We're gonna set a fire," he told her, "And then Lance is gonna put it out when he gets here."

"Yes!" Pidge cheered, "That's perfect! Should we be looking for smoke or light?"

Hunk looked out the front of the cave. "Probably smoke for now. Maybe light by the time you get here. It's gonna get dark soon - which means you should be looking around the edges of the sunlight on the planet! How far away are you?"

"We're getting close," she said thoughtfully, "And we'll be faster the more you can tell us about where you are. Dusk is great. Dusk is gonna be super helpful."

"I'll turn on the lights on the speeder, too," he said, "In case that helps."

"Lance, when we get there, they're building a fire for smoke, if they're still on the daylight side. They've got one speeder parked, and they'll leave the lights on so we'll have both that and the fire if it's past dark. We'll still have to be pretty close to see either of them, but it'll help a little. How many Galra are there?"

Hunk almost missed the question until the silence stretched a moment too long and he realized she was waiting on him. "I think it's just the one outpost. It's not very big. I don't know how many of them are left. I might have kind of blown some of them up," he admitted.

"You _what_? I think you might be breaking up, Hunk. Can you turn your comm up?"

"I - I kind of -" Hunk felt the blood drain from his face. Now that he was trying to say it out loud, he could feel the truth of it wrapping around his chest and squeezing, tight. _He'd blown people up_.

"Whoa, Hunk," Shiro said, face twisting in concern, "Are you-?"

He waved Shiro off. He was nauseous. His ears were ringing. He was supposed to be setting a fire. He was supposed to be getting them _home_. He needed to be moving. He breathed in through his nose, trying to calm down.

"Hunk's not doing great at the moment," Shiro said, "You should hurry."

"I'm ok," Hunk told them, forcing the words past his clenched teeth because he couldn't let them get sidetracked right now, "It's just been a long day. I'm ok. I'm gonna go turn the speeder's lights on."

He heard Shiro following him as he bolted out of the cave, but Shiro was slower than usual and maybe, maybe he could - no.

Hunk barely made it outside the cave's entrance before he was throwing up the water Shiro had brought him while he was working on the comms. By the time he was done, doubled over and gasping for breath, Shiro had caught up.

Shiro put a hand carefully on his back, the weight just discernible through one of the stronger bits of armor he had left. "You should have told me," he said gently. 

"I'm ok," Hunk said, clearing his throat and spitting. "It's - it's kind of a miracle I didn't throw up already today anyway."

"Hunk," Shiro said, "It's ok if you're not ok. You did what you had to do. It doesn't mean you're not still a good person."

Hunk shook his head. "I blew people up today. I mean I _knew_ I did that, and I knew I was doing that when it happened, but at the time it just - _quiznak_."

"You _did what you had to_ , Hunk," Shiro insisted, "You got away. And we're gonna be ok now. Both of us. You _saved_ me.  So let me - I'm gonna turn on the speeder lights. I can do that much on my own. And then we'll -" He sighed. "This is hard. I wish I could -" he waved toward his head and Hunk wasn't sure whether he was trying to say he wished he remembered something or he wished he didn't have a concussion or he just wished things were different. "You did good, Hunk. You had to do it. You did good."

Hunk felt silly. Silly and stupid and shaky. Here he was, a few minutes from getting to finally go home safely, and he was falling apart. Shiro was trying to look after him, and Shiro was doing a lot better than he had been before, but that didn't mean he wasn't still concussed. He was the one who was supposed to be looking after _Shiro_ , not the other way around. He straightened up, clenching his fists like that would give him a grip on himself.

His hands were shaking. Everything was shaking. Even his clenched fists couldn't hide that. But he _had_ to get himself under control. He _had_ to. He needed to take care of Shiro. He needed to set a fire so the others could find them.

He stumbled forward a few steps, grabbing for one of the short, scrubby bushes until suddenly he heard it - the sound of speeders. Eyes widening, he turned to look at Shiro, who was just climbing into the speeder's cockpit.

Shiro looked up too, flipped on the speeder's lights, and climbed back out faster than he'd been moving all day.

Hunk watched in horror as Shiro tripped himself up in his hurry. "We've gotta get in the cave," he told Shiro, rushing forward and slipping an arm around the other paladin's waist even though Shiro had mostly managed to steady himself already.

"Yeah," Shiro agreed, putting an arm around Hunk's shoulder.

They stumbled toward the cave entrance together, both shouting as soon as they were within range. "Pidge, the Galra are coming! We can hear them!"

" _Quiznak!"_ Pidge cursed, biting her lip before she added any more curse words into the mix. They were still a little way out, the planet close enough for them to start aiming for the sun line but not close enough for them to make out any real details, and until they got there, there was nothing else she could do. She'd already caught Lance up and now it was just flying, and they were already going as fast as they could go.

"What?" Lance demanded.

"The Galra are closing in on them. They can _hear_ them."

Lance mumbled something under his breath she couldn't quite make out, but she wasn't sure she needed to. "How long do they have?" he asked.

She repeated the question to Hunk, "How long before they get there? Can we still pick you up before they see you if we're just a few more dobashes?"

"I don't know," Hunk answered, "They came before, but I don't know how long it took. I wasn't listening so hard, and I didn't know they were there until I saw them and anyway, they're probably in more of a hurry now, 'cause they know I-" he cut off his own rambling, sounding upset. "I don't know, Pidge. We just need you to make it here."

Lance had held off on interrupting this time, finally, and she hated to have to repeat back, "They're not sure."

"Quiznak."

"Look, Hunk, we're coming as fast as we can," she said, "Stay in your cave. We'll find you."

"No," Lance interjected, " _You'll_ find them. You've got cloaking. Shiro's hurt and you said Hunk doesn't seem that ok. I'll hold the rest of them off."

Her stomach twisted. Lance's plan was smart, and she knew it, but the thought of hiding, invisible, while Lance took on the Galra by himself made her feel flushed and helpless. "You can't take on their whole force by yourself," she protested, "We don't even know how many there are."

"Wait, he wants to take _all_ of them on?" Hunk squawked, "He can't - they're gonna be really mad! Like, even madder than usual Galra mad!"

"Hunk says they're gonna be really pissed off," she passed on, "It's too dangerous."

"Well, I'll just have to _cool_ off their tempers, won't I?" he joked, "Get it? 'Cause I have ice powers?"

Pidge almost snapped at him not to joke about it, but then another idea hit her. "If we're gonna do that-" Hunk and Shiro made vague noises of protest, but she ignored them, "You've got to tell me if you need help. If we have to, I can vine over the entrance to the cave with Hunk and Shiro inside and we can both fight them."

"No!" Hunk said, heart racing at the thought of Pidge and Lance taking on the whole outpost, "You can't - it's -" It would be a massacre. Like it had been when he blew up half of their buildings. It would be wrong, and it would be his fault, just like when he'd blown them up, and he couldn't carry that. He couldn't. Not even when they were Galra.

Shiro put a hand on his shoulder, "Pidge, are you sure? Is Lance sure?"

"We're sure," she said, so fast she couldn't possibly have checked with Lance first. He must be really determined, then. And so was she. Hunk's chest felt tight. Was this what Shiro had felt like when he'd left this morning? Was this what it was like when they left Allura behind at the Castle? Was this what Shiro felt like all the time, when he thought they might have to kill people?

"It'll be fine," she said, "We're so close now. And we're getting pretty fast at orbiting even with the weird magnetic fields out here, and the sun line's nice and clear. We're gonna find you any minute. Any minute, I promise." She paused for a moment, "Not until we get there, Lance. I'm not leaving you alone until we know there won't be any surprises."

Surprises. What could he tell them about surprises? He closed his eyes, running back through everything he could remember from the Galra computers and trying to keep a grip on himself. "I don't think they have deliveries very often. I don't think there's any major infrastructure. I'm not even totally sure why they're here."

"Well, we can find out once we get you both home," Pidge said decidedly. "Sit tight. I think I see smoke."

Shiro reached out to grab Hunk's hand, squeezing it gently. "They're on their way. We're gonna be ok."

Hunk took a deep breath, trying not to think too hard about the fact that Lance and Pidge might be about to go into battle for them. Maybe they would beat the Galra here. Maybe it would be fine.

He pulled his hand out of Shiro's. "I'm gonna gather up our stuff. I'll wrap it up in my Paladin armor. If they get here before the Galra we'll-"

"What did you light on fire?" Pidge asked. Hunk's heart skipped a beat. "'Cause that is a _lot_ of-"

"Stop!" Shiro shouted, beating Hunk to it, "Pidge, we didn't! We ran out of time."

Pidge whistled, and Hunk wrinkled his forehead, not sure what that was about. "No, he was not," she said, answering something he couldn't hear. "What did you _do_ , Hunk?"

Hunk blushed. Whatever Lance had said, he could imagine the gist of it.

"He'll tell us later," Shiro said, "You've gotta hurry. You're behind the Galra."

"Not for long," Pidge muttered. "I _know_ , Lance, I am!" she added, louder. "I'll let you know when I find you," she told them, her voice serious and businesslike, "And I'll uncloak when I land."

Hunk stood up, gathering the things he needed to bring with him and taking his bayard back from Shiro. Shiro hovered too close to him as they waited in the cave mouth, but he wasn't sure if it was because Shiro was worried about him or if he just didn't realize how close he was standing with the concussion.

"I've got you!" Pidge's voice sounded muffled coming from the comm device in his arms, but it still sent a wave of relief rushing through his body. "I'm coming in."

They heard Green land before they saw her, the dust puffing up into the air around her feet before Pidge turned the cloaking off.

Pidge practically launched herself out of the lion, leaping down to pull both of them into the biggest hug her short arms could manage. "Never do that again!" she ordered, on the move the moment she'd let go of the hug, "We've gotta go get Lance!"

Shiro let Pidge help him up into Green and Hunk followed behind with his armful of uniform and technology. Pidge tried to close the door behind him, but he stopped her, flinging an arm out to keep it from shutting. "Wait! I've gotta get the dynotherms!"

She looked confused. "No, Hunk, we've gotta-" Suddenly, a huge, slow smile spread across her face, and he felt his mouth mirroring hers. "Wait, are you telling me you-?"

"Yeah," he interrupted, "I got it. And the infracells," he picked the infracell box up out of the pile he'd dumped on the floor and waved it at her.

"Hunk, you're a genius. Hurry up!"

As he scrambled back down and into the cave for the dynotherm, he half-heard Lance's voice from the cockpit, "Is that them? Do you have them? Oof."

He couldn't hear Pidge's answer, but she was still answering questions when he got back lugging the part. "Not as good as I expected - he's got shrapnel stuck in his armor!"

Hunk twisted around to look at his back. Huh. Sure enough, there was shrapnel stuck there. "I should probably change, huh?"

Pidge leapt up out of her seat, closing the door quickly behind him, "When we get off this planet? Absolutely."

" _Dios,_ Hunk, it's good to hear from you!" Lance said, the first word coming out so emphatic Hunk almost wondered whether it was a curse or a prayer. "Let's get out of here!"

"Can you get free?" Pidge asked.

"Yeah, they don't have any real firepower. Even if they have a real ship back at the base, they'll never get back in time to catch us. See you in the atmosphere!"

Green took off, and they hadn't made it far off the ground before Hunk could see Blue through the front window, disengaging. The Galra below them weren't far from the cave, but that didn't matter now. Lance shot a few more streams of ice at the Galra as they made their escape, but it only took a few more seconds before they were up too high for the Galra to reach them.

They were out. They were free. They were going home.

Hunk was three breaths into the realization that he was safe when his whole body started shaking again, violently and from head to toe. He reached out to grab for the back of Pidge's seat, steadying himself. 

"Woo-hoo! Take that, Galra!" Lance sounded like his usual self, excited and always more energetic in a fight. Shiro snorted fondly, and Hunk turned to look at him. Shiro had taken a seat on Green's floor, leaning against her inside wall, and when he caught Hunk looking at him, he waved him over. Hunk shook his head, not sure he trusted his legs to hold him if he let go of Pidge's seat.

"We're out of comm range with the others," Pidge said, turning to look at him, "And the Castle's still too damaged for Allura to make us a wormhole, so unless Blue can do it herself again, we're gonna have to fly the whole way. We'd better floor it, just in case we're followed. You might want to sit down, though. Green's pretty speedy."

He smiled weakly at her, not sure whether she really meant it or whether she could feel him shaking through her chair. Either way, he could take a hint, and every moment they got farther away from the planet made him feel more tired and shaky, which was weird, because he was pretty sure the planet's weird magnetic fields had also been contributing to him feeling tired and shaky. He let go of the chair, walking carefully over to sit next to Shiro, and then sank down gratefully next to him.

Pidge and Lance chattered back and forth about how likely it was they were being followed, checking all their sensors and reporting the results to each other, and Shiro adjusted himself slightly to lean into Hunk's side. Hunk slid down a little and then leaned into Shiro in return, resting his head on Shiro's shoulder so he wouldn't accidentally jostle his head.

Once they were far enough away from the planet to be sure they hadn't been followed, Lance switched topics. "All the smoke at that compound was _wild_. You're gonna have to tell me the whole story, Hunk. I bet it was badass!"

Hunk's heart sank, but before he could think of something to say that wouldn't make him feel awful, Pidge answered for him, glancing over her shoulder to look at him and Shiro. "Maybe later, Lance," she said, "I know you can't see them yet, but they look exhausted."

He _was_ exhausted. "Thanks, Pidge," he managed. He didn't know if his voice had always sounded this ragged, or if it was just because he felt like he was on the edge of falling asleep. As his adrenaline wore off, he felt pain flood his body, second only to the exhaustion that came with it.  Shiro wriggled his arm out from where Hunk was leaning on it and wrapped it around his shoulders instead, and Hunk felt himself dozing off, all of a sudden, like he'd just completely run out of gas.


	7. Epilogue

Coming out of cryosleep was _supposed_ to be disorienting.  He knew that.  He'd watched half of his friends coming out of it.  He still almost fell over as his knees gave out, surprised to find Keith catching him.  He didn't even remember gettinginto cryo.  He didn't remember getting back to the Castle.  He didn't remember  _anything_ since he fell asleep in the back of the Green lion.

"Hunk!  Guys, he's awake early!"  Keith shouted for the others, not letting go even as Hunk steadied himself.

"Where's Shiro?" he asked, "Is he ok?  Did we get back ok?  How's his head?"

Before Keith could answer, Lance came barreling into the room, charging straight toward Hunk and flinging his arms out.  "You're ok!"  Keeping one arm around Keith to steady himself, Hunk held out the other arm to catch Lance, pulling him into a tight hug.

Pidge wasn't far behind, but she'd already hugged him once, back on the planet, so she hopped up onto her toes and slugged him in the newly healed shoulder instead.  "That's for having like a million different injuries and pretending you were fine."

"I  _was_  fine!"

"You were in an  _explosion_!"

"Yeah, we still don't know what happened there," Lance said, "I'm  _dying_ to hear about it."

"It was uh - technically there were two explosions," he said, "You'd have liked it, Lance."

Keith laughed, a sharp, sudden bark that made Hunk feel proud of himself even as he tried not to think too much about what had happened on the planet.  Lance tightened his arm around Hunk, clearly too happy to take it as an insult.

A dinging noise behind him indicated another ready pod and Lance stepped away to catch Coran before he could topple over, Keith following a moment later when it became clear that Coran was much wobblier than Hunk.  Allura swept into the room just as he stabilized himself enough to start asking questions about what had happened.

"We've had rather an eventful week, I'm afraid," she said, smiling as she looked them both over, "But we're up and running again now, and it shouldn't take more than a few more quintants for Pidge and I to get the rest of the ship in shape.  Faster if you're up to helping.  But I think all of that should wait until Shiro's out of the pod and you've all had a nice warming cup of - what was that you were trying to make last week, Hunk?  Tea?"

"Yeah," he answered, "Sort of.  Those leaves weren't as close as I'd hoped."

"Well, you ought to warm up either way," she said resolutely, "And there's no harm in trying again!"

Pidge took Hunk's elbow like she planned to support him back to the kitchen, but he stayed put, instead.  "I - tea sounds great, but I want to stay here with Shiro.  I've got to make sure he's ok." 

He felt a little silly staying here when he probably  _should_ be worrying about getting warm, if they'd thought something was wrong enough with him to put him in a cryopod.  But he couldn't just go with them when this still didn't feel real.  Any moment, he might wake up and still be on the planet, and then he'd regret leaving Shiro.

Allura and Pidge glanced at each other, but before they could protest, Coran spoke up.

"Well, that sounds like a great idea," he said, "We'll just sit down here and rest the old cryo-knees.  No need to go walking around all over if we're not in a hurry."  He sat down on the steps in front of his pod so suddenly he almost pulled Lance and Keith with him.

Hunk smiled at him, trying to let him know he appreciated the backup.  He headed over to sit next to him, letting Pidge stay under his elbow until he made it to the steps.  Walking turned out to be a little harder than he'd thought, so it was probably good she was there.  He just didn't want to squash her by leaning on her too hard.

Lance slid down to sit between Hunk and Coran and Pidge laughed, "I guess you're not coming to the kitchen either, huh?  Lazy."

Lance flung his arms around Hunk and Coran's shoulders, "Look,  _somebody's_ gotta warm them up before you get back," he joked.  Hunk leaned contentedly into the embrace.  It was good to be home, surreal feeling or not.

By the time the others were done making tea and bringing blankets and rearranging themselves into a comfortable jumble on the steps, he almost felt normal again, like he could believe he was here.  Pidge had sat down on Hunk's other side, snuggling into him with her own cup of tea in her hands, and even the fluffy blanket around his shoulders wasn't as warm as having both her and Lance pressed up against him.

Keith was sitting on the floor at the bottom of the steps, leaning backward into his hands, and with his foot only a few inches away from Hunk's, like he wanted to be close by.  Allura had curled up against Coran's other side and was using his shoulder as a pillow and sipping occasionally from the cup of tea she'd set on the steps beside her.

Lance sighed, leaning his head into Hunk's as he watched Shiro in the pod.  "It'll be nice to have us all back together again."

"Yeah," Hunk agreed, "Thanks for coming to get me."

Lance rearranged to get an arm around Hunk, hugging him tightly before letting go.  "Of course."

"Always," Keith added, nudging Hunk's foot affectionately with his own.

"Actually, we had a big argument about who was gonna get to go," Pidge explained.  "Keith took one for the team and stayed."

"We would all have gone, if it hadn't meant leaving Coran," Allura said softly.

"Leaving me?  Were you worried about me?" he asked, taking her hand.

"We were all worried about you, Coran!" Hunk said, "Me and Shiro, too, but we knew you wouldn't get better if we couldn't get the cryopods working at full strength."

Coran nodded, thinking it over.  "Yes, that makes sense.  Sorry to worry you all.  I still can't seem to remember what happened!  It must have been a heck of a thing to take the Castle systems out so badly."

Hunk stiffened.  He didn't mind telling Coran they'd been attacked and the Castle had been damaged and he'd been injured in the explosion.  But the rest of it -

"We'll tell you later," Pidge said, talking to Coran but looking at Hunk, "Once Shiro wakes up."

Allura looked confused for a second, peering around Coran to look at Pidge.  Then she put the pieces together.  Hunk wondered what Pidge had told her about why he didn't want to talk about what had happened.  But that was another question for later.  "Yes," Allura agreed, "I think for tonight we should just celebrate being back together.  Everything else can wait."

For the first time in a long time, Hunk felt like that really was true.  The rest of the world could wait.

Hunk grabbed Pidge's hand, squeezing it to thank her for taking care of him.  "Can we celebrate right here?"

Allura laughed softly.  "I don't see why not."

They settled in to wait for Shiro to wake up, and this time staying calm didn't take any effort at all.  He almost dozed off again in the middle of his friends, content just to wait.  Tomorrow would be what it would be.  Today they were all alive together.

 


End file.
